Comparison of Tomo-PIV Versus Dual Plane PIV on a Synthetic Jet Flow

Particle Imaging Velocimetry (PIV) is a planar velocity measurement technique that has found widespread use across a wide class of engineering disciplines. Tomographic PIV (tomoPIV) is an extension of the traditional PIV technique whereby the velocity across a volume of fluid is measured. TomoPIV provides additional fluid mechanical properties of the flow due to the adjacent planes of velocity information that are extracted. Dual Plane PIV is another approach for providing cross-plane flow field properties. Dual Plane PIV and tomoPIV provide all of the same flow properties, albeit through very different routes with significantly different levels of effort, hence a comparison of their application and performance would prove beneficial in a well-known, highly three dimensional flow field. A synthetic jet flow which has a wide range of flow field features including high velocity gradients and regions of high vorticity was used as a rigorous test bed to determine the capabilities limitations of the Dual Plane PIV and tomoPIV techniques. The results show that compressing 3D particle field information down to a limited number of views does not permit the accurate reconstruction of the flow field. The traditional thin sheet techniques are the best approach for accurate flow field measurements.