Digital-Particle-Image-Velocimetry (DPIV) in a scanning light-sheet: 3D starting flow around a short cylinder

Scanning-Particle-Image-Velocimetry Technique (SPIV), introduced by Brücker (1992) and Brücker and Althaus (1992), offers the quantitative investigation of three-dimensional vortical structures in unsteady flows. On principle, this technique combines classical Particle-Image-Velocimetry (PIV) with volume scanning using a scanning light-sheet. In our previous studies, single scans obtained from photographic frame series were evaluated to show the instantaneous vortical structure of the respective flow phenomena. Here, continuous video recordings are processed to capture also the temporal information for the study of the set-up of 3D effects in the cylinder wake. The flow is continuously sampled in depth by the scanning light-sheet and in each of the parallel planes frame-to-frame cross-correlation of the video images (DPIV) is applied to obtain the 2D velocity field. Because the scanning frequency and repetition rate is high in comparison with the characteristic time-scale of the flow, the evaluation provides a complete time-record of the 3D flow during the starting process. With use of the continuity concept as described by Robinson and Rockwell (1993), we obtained in addition the out-of-plane component of the velocity in spanwise direction. This in view, the described technique enabled the reconstruction of the three-dimensional time-dependent velocity and vorticity field. The visualization of the dynamical behaviour of these quantities as, e.g. by video, gave a good impression of the spanwise flow showing the “tornado-like” suction effect of the starting vortices.