PIV-based pressure fluctuations in the turbulent boundary layer

The unsteady pressure field is obtained from time-resolved tomographic particle image velocimetry (Tomo-PIV) measurement within a fully developed turbulent boundary layer at free stream velocity of U∞ = 9.3 m/s and Reθ = 2,400. The pressure field is evaluated from the velocity fields measured by Tomo-PIV at 10 kHz invoking the momentum equation for unsteady incompressible flows. The spatial integration of the pressure gradient is conducted by solving the Poisson pressure equation with fixed boundary conditions at the outer edge of the boundary layer. The PIV-based evaluation of the pressure field is validated against simultaneous surface pressure measurement using calibrated condenser microphones mounted behind a pinhole orifice. The comparison shows agreement between the two pressure signals obtained from the Tomo-PIV and the microphones with a cross-correlation coefficient of 0.6 while their power spectral densities (PSD) overlap up to 3 kHz. The impact of several parameters governing the pressure evaluation from the PIV data is evaluated. The use of the Tomo-PIV system with the application of three-dimensional momentum equation shows higher accuracy compared to the planar version of the technique. The results show that the evaluation of the wall pressure can be conducted using a domain as small as half the boundary layer thickness (0.5δ99) in both the streamwise and the wall normal directions. The combination of a correlation sliding-average technique, the Lagrangian approach to the evaluation of the material derivative and the planar integration of the Poisson pressure equation results in the best agreement with the pressure measurement of the surface microphones.