Searching of Individual Vortices in Experimental Data

Abstract

The turbulent flows consist of many interacting vortices of all scales, which all together self-organize being responsible for the statistical properties of turbulence. This chapter describes the searching of individual vortices in velocity fields obtained experimentally by Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) method. The vortex model is directly fitted to the velocity field minimazing the energy of the residual. The zero-th step (which does not a priori use the vortex model) shows the velocity profile of vortices. In the cases dominated by a single vortex, the profile matches the classical solutions, while in turbulent flow field, the profile displays velocity decrease faster than 1/r. The vortices fitted to measured velocity field past a grid are able to describe around 50 % of fluctuation energy by using 15 individual vortices, and by using 100 vortices, the fluctuating field is reconstructed by 75 %. The found vortices are studied statistically for different distances and velocities.