3D Lagrangian particle tracking of a subsonic jet using multi-pulse Shake-The-Box

[Display omitted] •Lagrangian Particle Tracking with adaptive search radii tracked 40,000 particles.•Accuracy and dynamic velocity range found to be superior to PIV.•Ultra high-resolution able to resolve gradients and turbulence across thin shear layer.•3D jet flow mean accelerations and fluctuations presented quantitatively.•Quantified position accuracy of 3D imaging system for different states of polarised light. Three-dimensional (3D) Lagrangian Particle Tracking (LPT) was performed on a subsonic jet flow at Mach 0.506 and 0.845 generated by a round nozzle with diameter-based Reynolds numbers of 1.7 × 105 and 3.1 × 105, respectively. The Multi-Pulse Shake-The-Box (MP-STB) technique was employed to reconstruct particle tracks along the four-pulse sequences, which were obtained by using orthogonally polarised light to separate the pulses on camera images. The MP-STB method applied here has a number of differences compared to previous publications, in particular, a new adaptive search radii approach, and an iterative strategy with particle track validation criteria customised for high subsonic/transonic flows. A description of this methodology is given followed by presentation of the instantaneous 3D flow velocity and material acceleration particle tracks. By ensemble-averaging the scattered instantaneous measurements extracted from individual particle tracks into small volumetric bins, highly resolved statistical quantities were obtained. The performance of MP-STB was assessed by comparing velocity profiles with published particle image velocimetry (PIV) data-sets. MP-STB was found to be able to better resolve the steep velocity gradients, in particular the thin jet shear layer near the nozzle exit. At this location the MP-STB results also yielded higher turbulence intensities compared with the reported studies for similar flow conditions. The MP-STB acceleration flow statistics were compared for the two Mach numbers, and for the Mach 0.506 case, higher levels of normalised acceleration and fluctuations were found. The position accuracy of the 3D imaging system was quantified and it was found that the use of two different states of polarisation had a direct impact on the accuracy and the amount successfully tracked particles. Further assessment of the particle imaging quality of each camera revealed a significant disparity between cameras. This was attributed to the particle light scattering intensity variations, which were highly dependent on the particl