Quantification and mitigation of PIV bias errors caused by intermittent particle seeding and particle lag by means of large eddy simulations

Abstract

In the present work, a standard large eddy simulation is combined with tracer particle seeding simulations to investigate the different PIV bias errors introduced by intermittent particle seeding and particle lag. The intermittency effect is caused by evaluating the velocity from tracer particles with inertia in a region where streams mix with different seeding densities. This effect, which is different from the vastly-discussed particle lag, is frequently observed in the literature but scarcely addressed. Here, bias errors in the velocity are analysed in the framework of a turbulent annular gaseous jet weakly confined by low-momentum co-flowing streams. The errors are computed between the gaseous flow velocity, obtained directly from the simulation, and the velocities estimated from synthetic PIV evaluations. Tracer particles with diameters of 0.037, 0.37 and 3.7 μm are introduced into the simulated flow through the jet only, intermediate co-flowing stream only and through both regions. Results quantify the influence of intermittency in the time-averaged velocities and Reynolds stresses when only one of the streams is seeded, even when tracers fulfil the Stokes-number criterion. Additionally, the present work proposes assessing unbiased velocity statistics from large eddy simulations, after validation of biased seeded simulations with biased PIV measurements. The approach can potentially be applied to a variety of flows and geometries, mitigating the bias errors.