Particle Image Velocimetry

Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) uses the displacement of small particles in the flow between sucessive light sheet exposures for velocity measurements. This methode is a whole field technique, i.e. every recording captures the whole light sheet area at once.

The institute participates in PIV-NET a thematic network on Particle Image Velocimetry funded by the European Union and coordinated by DLRin Goettingen/Germany.

JPEG picture (70KB).

This picture shows the PIV-recording and the evaluation of incoming particles in a Mach 2 flow, hitting a wedge surface. Since PIV allows the separation of incoming and refelected particle velocities in the auto-correlation domain, two velocity fields were obtained, thus providing the energy left in the surface by the particles. This investigation gave information on the erosion behaviour of different sized particles in transonic and supersonic flows. (Project S6807) See also:

PIV-NET Report 1998, Partner 25, TU-Graz (Postscript 3MB, ZIP 1.5 MB)