On the accuracy of velocity and vorticity measurements with PIV

A number of numerical techniques aimed at improving the accuracy of measurements using the correlation approach in Particle Image Velocimetry, PIV, are proposed and investigated. In this approach the velocity (displacement) is found as the location of a peak in the correlation map. Based on an experimental model the best performing peak finding approaches are selected among different strategies. Second, an algorithm is proposed which minimizes errors on the estimates of vorticity using velocity distributions obtained by means of PIV. The proposed methods are experimentally validated against a flow with known properties.