Reconstruction of turbulent pipe-flow profiles from laser Doppler velocimetry data

etc15 Tracking Number 314

Laser Doppler velocimetry (LDV) is a powerful experimental tool that finds increasing application in industrial research and product development. For example, LDV may be used to support the development of water, heat, and cooling meters as well as the design and validation of the associated testing and calibration facilities. For such applications, a basic quantity of interest is the volume flow rate Q that can be determined through numerical integration of the velocity profile over the measurement grid. However, under realistic experimental conditions, optical disturbances and reflections may cause corrupted and unreliable data at various measurement points. Here, we study a criterium to identify and reconstruct such data points. The reconstruction criterium is based on the standard error associated with each measurement point. Using some of our LDV data, we show that the error in Q with respect to a reference flow rate may be reduced significantly through the reconstruction. Consequently, the reconstruction criterium allows to establish accurate and reliable flow rates that have potential to be used as a primary validation reference.