Particle tracking velocimetry
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Particle tracking velocimetry (PTV) is a
velocimetry Velocimetry is the measurement of the velocity of fluids. This is a task often taken for granted, and involves far more complex processes than one might expect. It is often used to solve fluid dynamics problems, study fluid networks, in industria ...
method i.e. a technique to measure velocities and trajectories of moving objects. In fluid mechanics research these objects are neutrally buoyant
particle In the Outline of physical science, physical sciences, a particle (or corpuscule in older texts) is a small wikt:local, localized physical body, object which can be described by several physical property, physical or chemical property, chemical ...
s that are suspended in fluid flow. As the name suggests, individual particles are tracked, so this technique is a Lagrangian approach, in contrast to particle image velocimetry (PIV), which is an Eulerian method that measures the velocity of the fluid as it passes the observation point, that is fixed in space. There are two experimental PTV methods: * the two-dimensional (2-D) PTV. Measurements are made in a 2-D slice, illuminated by a thin
laser A laser is a device that emits light through a process of optical amplification based on the stimulated emission of electromagnetic radiation. The word "laser" is an acronym for "light amplification by stimulated emission of radiation". The fir ...
sheet (a thin plane); a low density of seeded particles allows for tracking each of them individually for several frames. * the three-dimensional ''particle tracking velocimetry'' (3-D PTV) is a distinctive experimental technique originally developed to study fully turbulent flows. It is now being used widely in various disciplines, ranging from structural mechanics research to medicine and industrial environments. It is based on a multiple camera-system in a stereoscopic arrangement, three-dimensional illumination of an observation volume, recording of the time sequence of stereoscopic images of optical targets (flow tracers illuminated particles), determining their instantaneous 3-D position in space by use of photogrammetric techniques and tracking their movement in time, thus obtaining a set of 3-D trajectories of the optical targets. Time-resolved three-dimensional Particle Tracking Velocimetry is known as 4D-PTV.


Description

The 3-D particle tracking velocimetry (PTV) belongs to the class of whole-field velocimetry techniques used in the study of turbulent flows, allowing the determination of instantaneous velocity and vorticity distributions over two or three spatial dimensions. 3-D PTV yields a time series of instantaneous 3-component velocity vectors in the form of fluid element trajectories. At any instant, the data density can easily exceed 10 velocity vectors per cubic centimeter. The method is based on stereoscopic imaging (using 2 to 4 cameras) and synchronous recording of the motion of flow tracers, i.e. small particles suspended in the flow, illuminated by a strobed light source. The 3-D particle coordinates as a function of time are then derived by use of image & photogrammetric analysis of each stereoscopic set of frames. The 3-D particle positions are tracked in the time domain to derive the particle trajectories. The ability to follow (track) a spatially dense set of individual particles for a sufficiently long period of time, and to perform statistical analysis of their properties, permits a Lagrangian description of the turbulent flow process. This is a unique advantage of the 3-D PTV method. A typical implementation of the 3D-PTV consists of two, three or four digital cameras, installed in an angular configuration and synchronously recording the
diffracted Diffraction is defined as the interference or bending of waves around the corners of an obstacle or through an aperture into the region of geometrical shadow of the obstacle/aperture. The diffracting object or aperture effectively becomes a s ...
or
fluorescent Fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation. It is a form of luminescence. In most cases, the emitted light has a longer wavelength, and therefore a lower photon energy, tha ...
light from the flow tracers seeded in the flow. The flow is illuminated by a collimated laser beam, or by another source of light that is often strobed, synchronously with the camera frame rate, to reduce the effective exposure time of the moving optical targets and "freeze" their position on each frame. There is no restriction on the light to be
coherent Coherence, coherency, or coherent may refer to the following: Physics * Coherence (physics), an ideal property of waves that enables stationary (i.e. temporally and spatially constant) interference * Coherence (units of measurement), a deri ...
or
monochromatic A monochrome or monochromatic image, object or color scheme, palette is composed of one color (or lightness, values of one color). Images using only Tint, shade and tone, shades of grey are called grayscale (typically digital) or Black and wh ...
; only its
illuminance In photometry, illuminance is the total luminous flux incident on a surface, per unit area. It is a measure of how much the incident light illuminates the surface, wavelength-weighted by the luminosity function to correlate with human brightness ...
has to be sufficient for imaging the tracer particles in the observational volume. Particles or tracers could be
fluorescent Fluorescence is the emission of light by a substance that has absorbed light or other electromagnetic radiation. It is a form of luminescence. In most cases, the emitted light has a longer wavelength, and therefore a lower photon energy, tha ...
,
diffractive Diffraction is defined as the interference or bending of waves around the corners of an obstacle or through an aperture into the region of geometrical shadow of the obstacle/aperture. The diffracting object or aperture effectively becomes a s ...
, tracked through as many consecutive frames as possible, and on as many cameras as possible to maximize positioning accuracy. In principle, two cameras in a stereoscopic configuration are sufficient in order to determine the three coordinates of a particle in space, but in most practical situations three or four cameras are used to reach a satisfactory 3-D positioning accuracy, as well as increase the trajectory yield when studying fully turbulent flows.


3D-PTV schemes

Several versions of 3D-PTV schemes exist. Most of these utilize either 3 CCDs3D Particle Tracking Velocimetry Method: Advances and Error Analysis
or 4 CCDs.3-D Particle Tracking Velocimetry
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Real time image processing schemes

The use of white light for illuminating the observation volume, rather than laser-based illumination, substantially reduces both the cost, and the health & safety requirements. Initial development of the 3-D PTV method started as a joint project between the Institute of Geodesy and Photogrammetry and the Institute of Hydraulics of ETH Zurich. Further developments of the technique include real-time image processing using on-camera FPGA chip.{{Cite journal, last=Kreizer, first=Mark, last2=Ratner, first2=David, last3=Liberzon, first3=Alex, date=2010, title=Real-time image processing for particle tracking velocimetry, journal=ExFl, language=en, volume=48, issue=1, pages=105–110, doi=10.1007/s00348-009-0715-5, bibcode=2010ExFl...48..105K, issn=0723-4864


See also

*
Hot-wire anemometry In meteorology, an anemometer () is a device that measures wind speed and direction. It is a common instrument used in weather stations. The earliest known description of an anemometer was by Italian architect and author Leon Battista Alberti ( ...
*
Laser Doppler velocimetry Laser Doppler velocimetry, also known as laser Doppler anemometry, is the technique of using the Doppler shift in a laser beam to measure the velocity in transparent or semi-transparent fluid flows or the linear or vibratory motion of opaque, refle ...
*
Molecular tagging velocimetry Molecular tagging velocimetry (MTV) is a specific form of flow velocimetry, a technique for determining the velocity of currents in fluids such as air and water. In its simplest form, a single "write" laser beam is shot once through the sample spac ...


References

* Maas, H.-G., 1992. Digitale Photogrammetrie in der dreidimensionalen Strömungsmesstechnik, ETH Zürich Dissertation Nr. 9665 * Malik, N., Dracos, T., Papantoniou, D., 1993. Particle Tracking in three dimensional turbulent flows - Part II: Particle tracking. Experiments in Fluids Vol. 15, pp. 279–294 * Maas, H.-G., Grün, A., Papantoniou, D., 1993. Particle Tracking in three dimensional turbulent flows - Part I: Photogrammetric determination of particle coordinates. Experiments in Fluids Vol. 15, pp. 133–146 * Srdic, Andjelka, 1998. Interaction of dense particles with stratified and turbulent environments. Ph.D. Dissertation, Arizona State University. * Lüthi, B., Tsinober, A., Kinzelbach W. (2005)- Lagrangian Measurement of Vorticity Dynamics in Turbulent Flow. Journal of Fluid Mechanics. (528), p. 87-118 * Nicholas T. Ouellette, Haitao Xu, Eberhard Bodenschatz, A quantitative study of three-dimensional Lagrangian particle tracking algorithms, Experiments in Fluids, Volume 40, Issue 2, Feb 2006, Pages 301 - 313. * Measurement Fluid dynamics