Development and Application of LED Illumination Color PIV

In this study, red, green, and blue light-emitting diodes (LED) are adopted as the light source to illuminate sequentially a two-dimensional soap film channel flow. Triple-exposure particle image is recorded on the same image frame by a 3-ccd color camera. Since the particles illuminated by the R, G, B LED will only be recorded on the R, G, B ccd-chip of the digital camera, three sequential exposure, R, G, B particle images can be obtained from separating the triple-exposure particle image. Two sequential velocity fields can be determined from the correlation analysis of the R-G and G-B sequential particle images. Time derivative of the velocity fields, and hence the evolution of the unsteady flow or the characteristics of turbulent flows can be analyzed from the two velocity fields determined. The color PIV method incorporated with the LED light has proven to be a cheap, safe, and powerful tool for the full-field flow measurements. Results of the flow past circular cylinder in the confined soap film channel flow are presented.