2D Spectral and Turbulence Length Scale Estimation with PIV

Article type: Research Article

Authors: Piirto, M. | Ihalainen, H. | Eloranta, H. | Saarenrinne, P.

Affiliations: Energy and Process Engineering, Tampere University of Technology, PO Box 589, 33101 Tampere, Finland | Measurement and Information Technology, Tampere University of Technology, PO Box 589, 33101 Tampere, Finland. e-mail: mika. piirto@tut.fi

Abstract: A new method to apply spatial two-dimensional power spectral density (2D PSD) analysis to the data measured with Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) has been introduced. Applying the method to a set of the velocity vector fields characteristic turbulence length scales can be estimated. In this method the computation of 2D PSD has been performed to two kinds of pre-processed data. In the first set, the local average has been spatially subtracted (Spatial decomposition) and in the second set the time-average has been subtracted (Reynolds decomposition). In the computation of 2D PSD the 2D FFT with the variance scaling has been used. Besides 2D spectral analysis this paper uses the distribution analysis of the various turbulence quantities and a structure analysis method to estimate the dimensions of coherent structures in the flow. Another method to analyse turbulence length scales is the estimation of the spatial 2D Auto Correlation Coefficient Function (2D ACCF). All these methods applied side by side to the PIV data increase the understanding of the turbulence, its scales and the nature of the coherent structures.

Keywords: PIV, turbulence, length scale, 2D spectral analysis, 2D, coherent structures

Journal: Journal of Visualization, vol. 4, no. 1, pp. 39-49, 2001