Velocity refinement of PIV using global optical flow

Abstract

In this study, we propose a method to enhance the particle image velocimetry (PIV) velocity resolution using global optical flow along with image warping. A global optical flow formula proposed by Brox et al. (High accuracy optical flow estimation based on a theory for warping. In: Proceedings of the 8th European conference on computer vision, vol 4, pp 25–36, 2004) is adopted to compensate the intensity changes of PIV image pairs, which depend on the set-up and synchronization of a laser and a camera. The proposed method is quantitatively evaluated and validated using synthetic particle image pairs generated for Rankine vortices and reference DNS-based velocity data. The proposed method outperforms the conventional PIV method in capturing small scale vortex and turbulent structures due to its enhanced spatial resolution. In addition, the proposed method shows good performance in large displacement fields and varying image intensity whereas optical flow is applicable to small displacement and susceptible to image intensity variation in general. Finally, the proposed method is applied to real PIV particle images of a multiple rectangular jet flow. The results show that the proposed method successfully works out high-resolution fluid mechanical structure and quantities while preserving the conventional PIV results.