A compact viewing configuration for stereoscopic micro-PIV utilizing mm-sized mirrors

When applying PIV to micrometer-resolution systems, the out-of-plane velocity component has shown to be much more difficult to obtain than the two in-plane velocity components. In this work, we present a novel stereoscopic viewing configuration for stereoscopic micro-PIV, utilizing mm-sized mirrors introduced in front of the microscope objective lens. Attractive applications, where the advantage of the mirror viewing configuration system could be utilized, include (on-chip) miniaturization and the potential to introduce more than two simultaneous viewing angles. Here, a first validation of our system is presented, including stereoscopic micro-PIV measurements in a micro-fabricated test device.