Uncertainty of PIV/PTV based pressure, using velocity uncertainty

Abstract

Pressure reconstruction from velocity measurements using particle image velocimetry (PIV) and particle tracking velocimetry (PTV) has drawn significant attention as it can provide instantaneous pressure fields without altering the flow. Previous studies have found that the accuracy of the calcualted pressure field depends on several factors including the accuarcy of the velocity measurement, the spatiotemporal resolutions, the method for calculating pressure-gradient, the algorithm for pressure-gradient integration, the pressure boundary condition, etc. Therefore, it is critical and challenging to quantify the uncertainty of the reconstructed pressure field. The recent development of the uncertainty quantification algorithms for PIV and PTV allows for the local and instantaneous uncertainty estimation of velocity measurement, which can be used to infer the pressure uncertainty. In this study, we introduce a framework that propagates the standard velocity uncertainty defined as the standard deviation of the velocity error distribution through the pressure reconstruction process to obtain the uncertainty of the pressure field. The uncertainty propagations through the calculation of the pressure-gradient and the pressure-gradient integration were modeled as linear transformations, which can reproduce the effects of the spatiotemporal resolutions, the numerical schemes, the integration algorithms, and the pressure boundary condition on the accuracy of the resulting pressure fields. The proposed uncertainty estimation approach also considers the effect of the spatiotemporal and componentwise correlation of the velocity errors in common PIV/PTV measurements on the pressure uncertainty.