FABRICATION OF PARTICLE IMAGE VELOCIMETRY SETUP FOR EXPERIMENTATION AT LOW REYNOLDS NUMBER
Date
2023-03
Journal Title
Journal ISSN
Volume Title
Publisher
I.O.E. Pulchowk Campus
Abstract
Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is a widely utilized experimental technique for fluid
analysis, particularly in low Reynolds number flow. This paper describes the design fabrication
process of the PIV setup and its application for studying the flow over a flat plate
(with a chord of 76.33 mm) at low Reynolds numbers ranging from 2,000 to 10,000. The
PIV system employs a class IIIB laser to illuminate a plane of seeding particles, a highspeed
camera (Chronos 2.1), and a smartphone camera to capture the frames at frame rates
of 100 fps and 16 fps, respectively. Sequential frames are cross-correlated using PIVlab,
a MATLAB-based image processing application for PIV, to generate two-dimensional
velocity fields. The velocity field data obtained are analyzed to identify low Reynolds
number flow features, such as laminar separation bubble, reattachment point, turbulent
mixing, and trailing edge vortex shedding pattern. Furthermore, the experimental results
are compared to the results from numerical simulation carried over same geometry at similar
Reynolds number. Finally, different sources of errors in the experimental setup, image
Description
Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is a widely utilized experimental technique for fluid
analysis, particularly in low Reynolds number flow.
Keywords
particle image velocimetry,, votex shedding, separation bubble