Pressure from particle image velocimetry for convective flows: a Taylor’s hypothesis approach

Abstract

Taylor’s hypothesis is often applied in turbulent flow analysis to map temporal information into spatial information. Recent efforts in deriving pressure from particle image velocimetry (PIV) have proposed multiple approaches, each with its own weakness and strength. Application of Taylor’s hypothesis allows us to counter the weakness of an Eulerian approach that is described by de Kat and van Oudheusden (2012 Exp. Fluids 52 1089–106). Two different approaches of using Taylor’s hypothesis in determining planar pressure are investigated: one where pressure is determined from volumetric PIV data and one where pressure is determined from time-resolved stereoscopic PIV data. A performance assessment on synthetic data shows that application of Taylor’s hypothesis can improve determination of pressure from PIV data significantly compared with a time-resolved volumetric approach. The technique is then applied to time-resolved PIV data taken in a cross-flow plane of a turbulent jet (Ganapathisubramani et al 2007 Exp. Fluids 42 923–39). Results appear to indicate that pressure can indeed be obtained from PIV data in turbulent convective flows using the Taylor’s hypothesis approach, where there are no other methods to determine pressure. The role of convection velocity in determination of pressure is also discussed.