Sequential least-square reconstruction of instantaneous pressure field around a body from TR-PIV

A procedure is introduced to obtain an instantaneous pressure field around a wing from time-resolved particle image velocimetry (TR-PIV) and particle image accelerometry (PIA). The instantaneous fields of velocity and material acceleration are provided by the recently introduced multi-frame PIV method, fluid trajectory evaluation based on ensemble-averaged cross-correlation (FTEE). The integration domain is divided into several subdomains in accordance with the local reliability. The near-edge and near-body regions are determined based on the recorded image of the wing. The instantaneous wake region is assigned by a combination of a self-defined criterion and binary morphological processes. The pressure is reconstructed from a minimization process of the difference between measured and reconstructed pressure gradients in a least-square sense. This is solved sequentially according to a decreasing order of reliability of each subdomain to prevent a propagation of error from the less reliable near-body region to the free-stream. The present procedure is numerically assessed by synthetically generated 2D particle images based on a numerical simulation. Volumetric pressure fields are then evaluated from tomographic TR-PIV of a flow around a 30-degree-inclined NACA0015 airfoil. A possibility of using a different scheme to evaluate material acceleration for a specific subdomain is presented. Moreover, this 3D application allows the investigation of the effect of the third component of the pressure gradient by which the wake region seems to be affected.