DYNAMIC RANGES OF VELOCITY AND SPATIAL-RESOLUTION OF PARTICLE IMAGE VELOCIMETRY

To observe instantaneous fields of vorticity and rate-of-strain using PIV (particle image velocimetry) measurements of the velocity field, i t is necessary to achieve maximum dynamic ranges in space and in veloc ity while simultaneously making accurate, low-noise measurements for t he differentiation process. In this paper the dynamic ranges achievabl e with PIV are established in the context of the super-resolution algo rithm described previously which seeks to extract the maximum possible information from a particle image field. Bounds on the dynamic spatia l range and the dynamic velocity range are established in terms of opt ical parameters, and simple rules are derived for optimum design of PI V optical systems for various types of image recording media.