PIV technique implementation for wind mapping in complex topographies

An experimental study was conducted to demonstrate PIV's capability to provide a detailed characterization of the flow field over complex topographic terrain in a large boundary layer wind tunnel setup. Two-dimensional velocity fields were measured in horizontal and vertical planes over a 1:3000 scaled topographic model. The non-uniform seed distribution was found to be a major issue which could affect the PIV velocity vectors. A novel scheme was developed to automatically detect the regions with low seed density and exclude them from further analysis. The mean and turbulent velocities obtained from PIV and previous hotwire measurements are compared and show good agreement. The study shows that PIV can be successfully used to measure flow over complex geometries in large wind tunnel setups, enabling the flow structure to be mapped with a very high spatial resolution.