Reconstruction of the density field using the Colored Background Oriented Schlieren Technique (CBOS)

Abstract In this paper the improved Background Oriented Schlieren technique called CBOS (Colored Background Oriented Schlieren) is described and used to reconstruct density fields of three-dimensional flows. The Background Oriented Schlieren technique (BOS) allows to measure the light deflection caused by density gradients in a compressible flow. For this purpose the local image displacements of the image of a background pattern observed through the flow is used. In order to increase the performance of the conventional Background Oriented Schlieren technique, the monochromatic background is replaced by a colored dot pattern. The different colors are treated separately using suitable correlation algorithms. Therefore, the accuracy and the spatial resolution can be increased. A tomographic reconstruction method is then used to reconstruct the density field in three-dimensional flows from CBOS measurements.