A modified optical flow algorithm based on bilateral-filter and multi-resolution analysis for PIV image processing

Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) technology is an efficient and powerful testing method to investigate the characteristics of flow field. The topic of PIV post-processing techniques has roused researchers׳ wide concern for its great influence on the success of flow field measurement. The traditional correlation algorithms have their innate defects. In the present study, a modified optical flow algorithm is proposed to overcome these deficiencies based on bilateral-filter and multi-resolution analysis of PIV image processing. The algorithm is designed based on the principle of multilayer segments, in which the isotropic diffusion method is employed to calculate the low-resolution layer of the image and the nonlinear filtering method is used to process the high-resolution layer. This new algorithm can reduce image noise effectively and maintain the details of the image boundary. In addition, the design of nonlinear filter makes the optical flow equation simpler, and the optimal velocity mapping factor method needs less iteration and reduces the computational load. The algorithm is first tested on synthetic time-resolved channel flow images, and the computational results from the simulated particle images are found to be in reasonable agreement with the given simulated data. The algorithm is then applied to images of actual up-channel flow, and the results also confirmed that the algorithm proposed in the present study has good performance and reliability for post-processing PIV images.     

Phase discrimination and a high accuracy algorithm for PIV image processing of particle–fluid two-phase flow inside high-speed rotating centrifugal slurry pump

PIV technology is an efficient and powerful measurement method to investigate the characteristics of fluid flow field. But for PIV particle image post-processing, some problems still exit in two-phase particles discrimination and velocity field algorithm, especially for high-speed rotating centrifugal slurry pump. In this study, through summarization and comparison of the various phase discrimination methods, we proposed a two-phase identification method based on statistics of gray-scale level and particle size. The assessment of performance through experimental PIV images shows that a satisfying effect for particle identification. For high speed rotation of the impeller, a combination of adaptive cross-correlation window deformation algorithm and multistage grid subdivision is presented. The algorithm is applied to experimental PIV images of solid–liquid two-phase flow in a centrifugal slurry pump, the results show that the algorithm in the present study has less pseudo vector number and more matching particle pairs than those of fixed window and window translation methods, having the ability to remove pseudo vector efficiently. It confirmed that the algorithm proposed in the present study has good performance and reliability for PIV image processing of particle–fluid two-phase flow inside high-speed rotating centrifugal slurry pump.     

基于MATLAB的PIV软件(MPIV)的开发与应用

研究一种基于MATLAB的PIV软件MPIV，可处理各种粒子密度的PIV图像。选用两种有代表性的算法，分别是对应于高粒子密度图像的基于快速傅立叶变换的互相关法，以及对应于低粒子密度图像的二值化图像相关法，以旋转流场为例，通过计算机模拟粒子图像，检验软件的可行性。     

Measurement of particle/bubble motion and turbulence around it by hybrid PIV

Characteristics of bubble flow are influenced by bubble motion, liquid flow and interactions between bubbles, and between a bubble and liquid phase. Thus because behavior of a single bubble and liquid around it is regarded as one of the basic elements characterizing bubble flow, the single bubble motion in stagnant water was investigated experimentally by using flow visualization and image processing methods. The bubble motion is influenced by several factors, that is, bubble size, density difference between gas and liquid, bubble shape and deformation in motion. In order to separate the effect of each factor, some solid particles with different size, shape and/or density were also measured and the characteristic of each factor was discussed. Two-dimensional water velocity field and the motion of a rising particle/bubble in the water were simultaneously measured by PIV (Particle Image Velocimetry) and PTV (Particle Tracking Velocimetry), respectively (Hybrid PIV). The experimental results showed that the large density difference between a particle and water caused high relative velocity and induced zigzag motion of the particle. Furthermore, the turbulence intensity of a bubble was about twice in the case of the spherical solid particle of similar diameter.     

Experimental PIV and LIF characterization of a bubble column flow

Experimental 2D Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurements, with uniform background lighting and Laser Induced Fluorescence (LIF) of the tracking particles, were performed in order to characterize the air-water biphasic flow and the 2D bubble column rising velocity in static water. Some applications require knowledge of the simultaneity of two-phase flow characteristics. The two phase flow air/water are common application in industry as chemical, hydraulic and nuclear industry, water treatment by aeration, and measurements are implemented to characterize the behaviour of the air bubbles column flow. The bubble flow studied in this paper is related to the optimization of the aeration in hydraulic turbines with micro-bubbles. The first step of this study, presented in the paper, is a complete characterization of a bubble column issued from a metallic sparger with holes of 0.5 mm diameter. For its complete characterization is determined simultaneously, via image processing technics, the flow velocity field induced by the column of bubbles in water, and the bubbles features: the bubble ascension velocity, diameter variation, interfacial area and shape factor. The results are compared with bibliographical data.     

Measurement of the surrounding liquid motion of a single rising bubble using a Dual-Camera PIV system

A new type of Particle Image Velocimetry technique, called “Dual-Camera PIV System”, was developed in order to achieve higher-accuracy measurement at a high time resolution. It is very difficult to measure precisely a complex flow field such as a gas–liquid two phase flow using PIV, because of the existence of a strong turbulence. In the conventional dynamic PIV, a time interval of two images required for analysis depends basically on a camera frame rate. A time interval of a set of PIV images affects the measurement accuracy significantly. Therefore, it is necessary to shorten the time interval of a set of PIV images as well as to achieve high frame rates. For this specific purpose, we developed a measurement system composed of two high speed cameras. The interval of two images obtained from each camera was controlled arbitrarily. Furthermore, a recursive cross-correlation method was adopted as PIV algorithm in order to achieve high spatial resolution. The interrogation areas were determined from the number density of PIV particles. The developed system was evaluated by cross-correlation coefficient and signal–noise (S/N) ratio. As the demonstration, the surrounding liquid motion in the vicinity of a single rising bubble was measured via this measurement system.     

粒子图像测速(PIV)技术的发展

在流场显示测量技术中，粒子图像测速(PIV)技术占有相当重要的地位，本文重点介绍了PIV的测试原理及应用要求，并以TSI公司开发的PIV系统为例对DPIV系统的构成作了概括，同时指出了PIV技术的未来发展方向。     

Experimental analysis of the flow dynamics in the suction chamber of an external gear pump

Time-Resolved Particle Image Velocimetry (TRPIV) has been used to investigate the flow inside the suction chamber of an external gear pump where the movement of the fluid through the pump is maintained by the rotation of the gears. The main purpose of this paper is to study the characteristics of the complex flow pattern of this pump system in order to help in improving its total performance. The applied experimental techniques establish a method that allows visualising the flow inside the gear pump with a high rotational velocity system. Small micro air bubbles have been used as flow seeding. The images have been processed using domestic PIV software that uses specific aspects of the TRPIV technique. Instantaneous and phase-locked ensemble average fluid motions have been obtained for different gear pump rotational velocities to investigate the turbulence effect of rotating gears to the system.     

Application of PIV measurement techniques to study the characteristics of flame–acoustic wave interactions

The present paper introduce the development of the experimental setup and measurement methodologies to study the structure of acoustic wave and the interaction between the acoustic fields and flame flow inside a square tube by using a time-resolved Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV). The design of signal synchronisation system, the selection of seeding particles, the test of seeding methods and the statistical analysis of the PIV data were introduced. The titanium dioxide (TiO₂) was selected as the seeding particle for the PIV. The accuracy of synchronisation system was checked by a simple experiment. A time-resolved PIV results showed that the acoustic velocity difference was less than 2.8% at specific phase angle over 1000 excitation cycles at an excitation frequency of 385 Hz. For the case of hot flame gas, the largest difference is 4.4% over 100 excitation cycles at an excitation frequency of 10 Hz. Results proves that the present experimental system has high reliability to measure and analyse the characteristics of flame–acoustic interactions.     

离子风空气加速器流场的PIV技术研究

空气电晕放电离子风技术是一门新颖的技术,离子风空气加速器研究是其实际应用的一个分支。分析了离子风空气加速器的原理,通过PIV粒子成像技术对离子风空气加速器流场的特性进行了研究,获得了清晰准确的离子风速度场图像。研究结果显示：在不考虑电晕极之间电场影响的前提下,随着放电电压的提高,气流速度随之提高;对于离子风空气加速器内部的复杂流场,PIV技术测量是一种行之有效地全流场测量方法。     

A hybrid phase boundary detection technique for two-phase-flow PIV measurements

Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurement accuracy is lower along the phase boundaries of two-phase-flows, because the interrogation windows contain information from both phases. Different seeding density, background intensity, velocity magnitude and flow direction conditions often exist across the boundary, and the cross-correlation-based PIV algorithm selects only the highest correlation peak. The highest correlation peak is either influenced by the wrong phase (across the boundary), or the correctly calculated displacement is erroneously detected as an outlier at a later stage and is subsequently replaced. Phase-separated PIV measurements minimize this problem, and increase accuracy along the boundary by treating each phase separately. This type of measurement requires for each time step; (i) the accurate detection of the phase boundary in consecutive frames, (ii) generation of dynamic phase masks, (iii) an accurate PIV evaluation of each phase and (iv) recombination of the flow fields. In this article, we focus on the first step and test a hybrid phase boundary detection (PBD) technique in three different two-phase-flow configurations which manifest different challenges: The first configuration is the mixing of two liquids in a magnetic micromixer, the second is a combustion experiment where a turbulent, pre-mixed, low-swirl, lifted flame is investigated, and the third is a bubble column reactor where air bubbles are rising in a water tank. The PBD implementation uses a three-step procedure: approximate global thresholding, local Otsu thresholding, and discrimination of image gradients. Comparison of results with and without the use of PBD and phase separation indicate that there are significant measurement accuracy improvements along the boundary.     

三相旋流抛光磨粒运动的测量与微气泡补偿

研究了气液固三相旋流流场抛光机理和规律。设计了三入口的抛光加工流道,对气液固三相旋流抛光流场进行了数值模拟。基于模拟结果设计了气液固三相磨粒流旋流流场测量平台,并通过粒子图像测速法(PIV)测量了微气泡补偿条件下气液固三相旋流抛光的流场参数,获得了微气泡补偿区域流场的运动图像、速度矢量图和涡量图。PIV测量试验数据显示:在微气泡补偿区域,磨粒速度主要集中在30m/s到80m/s,同一测量点高速磨粒出现频率明显增加,少数磨粒速度达到100m/s以上;磨粒平均速度从33.8m/s增大到44.2m/s,经4h抛光后硅片表面最大粗糙度从10.4μm下降到1.3μm。理论和试验研究表明,气液固三相旋流抛光流场中微气泡溃灭引发的空化冲击效应可增大磨粒动能,提高抛光效率,实现B区域的均匀化抛光。     

Dual-modality UDV-PIV system for measurement of solid-liquid flow in sewage facilities

Population growth and global industrialization cause a dramatic increase in the amount of sewage sludge produced annually worldwide from Municipal and Industrial Wastewater treatment. The efficient measurement of sewage, which is a typical solid-liquid two-phase flow, has become an important issue that requires to be urgently addressed. In this study, an improved Ultrasonic Doppler Velocimetry (UDV) is proposed to optimize the probe design and hardware design, which reduces the influence of working frequency and echo reverberation on accuracy and improves the stability of the system. A Doppler peak extraction and superposition method is also put forward to correct the offset of Doppler peak frequency. In this paper, Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is used to calibrate the UDV system to modify the measurement model of ultrasonic Doppler liquid-solid two-phase flow, and dynamic experiments are carried out in a vertical steel pipe with inner diameter of 50 mm at different flow conditions. The results show that the accuracy and stability of UDV measurement system are greatly improved, with a maximum relative error of 1.49%.     

磁力搅拌湍流场的PIV测量及流场演变的POD分析

为了解磁力搅拌过程湍流特性,对其开展了激光粒子图像测速(PIV)试验,并进行了本征正交分解(POD)分析。分析表明,在测量平面转子外部区域,除平均流动,含能量较高的流动结构为循环剪切流和转子旋转的尾涡结构。在搅拌槽底部具有较高的旋涡强度,有利于固体颗粒悬浮。流体与转子之间的流-固耦合作用使转子产生振荡,随转速升高,系统稳定性下降,平均流动含能降低,小尺度结构含能增加,涡流扩散增强,有利于混合和反应进行。     

3D and 2D experimental views on the flow field of gas-evolving electrode cold model for electrolysis magnesium

In the magnesium electrolysis process, chlorine gas bubbles release at the surfaces of anode and affect electrolyte flow patterns. This paper presents an experimental apparatus to simulate the flow field induced by chlorine gas evolution at the gas-evolving electrodes of magnesium electrolysis cell. The three-dimensional flow structures were determined by using volumetric three-component velocimetry (V3V) technique, which has the ability to capture the out-of-plane velocity component. The three-dimensional flow structures in the region with a depth about 120 mm can be obtained. To achieve this, approximately 15,000 three-dimensional velocity vectors were detected in the flow measurements and constituted the three-dimensional flow field, which eliminated the perspective error caused by the out-of-plane motion in Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) method. In experiments, comparisons are made between the V3V and PIV results. The in-of-plane velocities data obtained by V3V technique have the same trend with the PIV results, and V3V provides more details in the third direction for the flow field accurately.     

Application of video imagery techniques for low cost measurement of water surface velocity in open channels

Developments in digital video recording technology make the video imagery tools more popular for velocity measurement in water flows. This has especially been of large interest due to its inherent advantage of non-contact nature which is quite handy in extreme flow conditions. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV), Particle Tracking Velocimetry (PTV) and Large Scale Particle Tracking Velocimetry (LSPTV) are applied to free surface channel flow for water surface velocity measurement. Experiments are conducted to measure either a single point velocity applying PTV or velocity profiles across the channel width applying PIV on the water surface in a rectang typical velocities of nearly 1 andular tilting flume for various flow conditions. Technical issues regarding tracer particle size and type, travel distance, lighting, recording speed, camera position, image distortion and state of flow are discussed. Measured data is compared to computational results obtained from a numerical model involving a non-linear turbulence model capable of predicting turbulence driven secondary flows. Confirmation of reasonable match between computational and experimental results whereby applying mutual collaboration of them for discharge measurement has been attested. In addition to discharge, boundary roughness has also been predicted as an outcome of the numerical solution.     

Estimation of the liquid velocity field in two-phase flows using inverse analysis and particle tracking velocimetry

In bubbly two-phase flow, the gas phase and liquid phase have different flow fields. The relative velocity of the two phases depends on the motion characteristic of the bubbles. The mathematical expression for the motion of a small bubble at low Reynolds number is already established. Using the equation, the liquid velocity along the trajectory of the bubble is calculated inversely using the motion equation. Whole field liquid flow structure is also estimated using a spatial and/or temporal interpolation method. This paper proposes an algorithm for estimating the liquid phase flow field from measurement data on bubble motion. In order to verify this principle, Taylor–Green vortex flow and Karman vortex shedding from a square cylinder have been chosen. The results reveal that by combining the inverse analysis and PTV with the spatio-temporal post-processing algorithm one can reconstruct well the carrier phase flow of the gas–liquid two-phase flow.     

PIV measurements of air-core intake vortices

Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) measurements were conducted in a large-scale hydraulic model to obtain the horizontal velocity field of intake vortices with considerable air entrainment. Vortex wandering and air-core diameter were determined by object detection using PIV images and velocity vector maps. This allowed for the calculation of ensemble- and azimuthally-averaged velocity fields. The results of the horizontal velocity field around the vortex, whose circulation affects a wide area, confirm the applicability of the analytic solution of the 2D Navier–Stokes equation for a potential (free) vortex. The setup and the improvement of the PIV measurements and their limitations are presented. For example, a completely resolved velocity field close to the air-core did not exist due to reflections at the interface between air and water. Vortex characteristics like vorticity and circulation are derived from the velocity fields and turbulence is shown by representing in-plane Turbulent Kinetic Energy (TKE).     

Particle image velocimetry investigations on multiphase flow in fluidized beds: A review

Fluidized Beds (FBs) are widely employed in the petroleum and coal energy sector because they offer excellent contact, both in terms of high surface area and long times. The last two decades has seen measurement on multiphase flows shift from conventional pressure sensors to direct flow image acquisition and processing. Particle Image Velocimetry or PIV, and PIV coupled with Digital Image Analysis or DIA, are used to directly and instantaneously acquire flow field data to make hidden flow patterns and flow structures discoverable. Research abounds on Gas-Solid FB hydrodynamics using PIV, but Liquid-Solid and Gas-Liquid-Solid systems are only slowly catching up. Similarly, the use of Geldart B and D particles for such studies is very common, whereas A and C type particle hydrodynamics is as yet largely unexplored by using imaging. Turbulence, high temperature, particle clusters, particle agglomeration and dense particle flows pose particular challenges to using PIV in FB. The two-zone FB and micro-FB warrant further attention. Small sized A & C type particles of rod-like, plate-like and angular shape provide huge scope for PIV investigations on FBs in the future. This review provides a concise account of several PIV studies on all types of FBs with focus on the past two decades, and also details the limitations of PIV measurements with future scope of work.     

疏浚底泥分离用旋流器的数值模拟与试验研究

提出了一种用于疏浚底泥分离的新型锥形进料体旋流器结构,采用雷诺应力(RSM)湍流模型,应用Fluent软件分别对柱形和锥形进料体旋流器内部的流场进行数值模拟,结论表明锥形进料内流体的轴向速度和切向速度均有所提高,有利于减少短路流,提高分离效率。采用粒子图像测速技术(PIV)对锥形进料体旋流器内部流场进行测试并与模拟结果比较。结果表明模拟值与实测值吻合良好,验证了模拟方法的正确性。