Low-cost pulsed solid state illumination for microPIV measurements

Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is a non-invasive, full-field optical measurement technique that has become a dominant tool for velocity measurement of fluids and gases at both macro (traditional PIV) and micro (microPIV) scales. In PIV experiments, the fluid under the investigation is seeded with tracer particles, which are shining under an excitation by a properly tuned light source. The idea behind the method is to precisely register the position of corresponding particles in two shifted instances of time and then using these records calculating particle displacements, i.e. flow velocity. In most PIV experimental setups, illumination is performed using dual cavity pulse lasers, whose outputs reach several hundreds mJ at short pulse lengths (tens of nano-seconds). Unfortunately, such laser systems are very expensive and bulky. In this work, we investigate a possibility to replace the laser illumination with a high power LED illumination, aiming towards the development of the cost effective and portable microPIV systems.