Towards 3C-3D digital holographic fluid velocity vector field measurement—tomographic digital holographic PIV (Tomo-HPIV)

Abstract

Most unsteady and/or turbulent flows of geophysical and engineering interest have a highly three-dimensional (3D) complex topology and their experimental investigation is in pressing need of quantitative velocity measurement methods that are robust and can provide instantaneous 3C-3D velocity field data over a significant volumetric domain of the flow. This paper introduces and demonstrates a new method that uses multiple digital CCD array cameras to record in-line digital holograms of the same volume of seed particles from multiple orientations. This technique uses the same basic equipment as Tomo-PIV minus the camera lenses, it overcomes the depth-of-field problem of digital in-line holography and does not require the complex optical calibration of Tomo-PIV. The digital sensors can be oriented in an optimal manner to overcome the depth-of-field limitation of in-line holograms recorded using digital CCD or CMOS array cameras, resulting in a 3D reconstruction of the seed particles within the volume of interest, which can subsequently be analysed using 3D cross-correlation PIV analysis to yield a 3C-3D velocity field. A demonstration experiment of Tomo-HPIV using uniform translation with nominally 11 µm diameter seed particles shows that the 3D displacement derived from 3D cross-correlation Tomo-HPIV analysis can be measured within 5% of the imposed uniform translation, where the imposed uniform translation has an estimated standard uncertainty of 4.3%. So this paper proposes a multi-camera digital holographic imaging 3C-3D PIV method, which is identified as tomographic digital holographic PIV or Tomo-HPIV.