Quantification of the Influence of Particle Voids on PIV Measurements via Synthetic-PIV

Abstract

Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is an important technique to investigate complex flow fields but limited to the tracking fidelity of the flow tracers and the uncertainties in the evaluation process. To examine these issues this work implements a physic-based motion simulation for small spherical particles, serving as flow tracers in PIV, with existing tools for image generation. Particular focus set on the behavior in vortical structures and the occurrence of “particle voids” due to centrifugal forces. The results show that a realistic particle distribution ideally can be achieved when applying a statistical distribution of the particle size. Furthermore, they suggest a significant error in the velocity prediction if the region of interest has no sufficient particle seeding.