Lagrangian and Eulerian pressure field evaluation of rod-airfoil flow from time-resolved tomographic PIV

This work investigates the rod-airfoil air flow by time-resolved Tomographic Particle Image Velocimetry (TR-TOMO PIV) in thin-light volume configuration. Experiments are performed at the region close to the leading edge of a NACA0012 airfoil embedded in the von Karman wake of a cylindrical rod. The 3D velocity field measured at 5 kHz is used to evaluate the instantaneous planar pressure field by integration of the pressure gradient field. The experimental data are treated with a discretized model based on multiple velocity measurements. The time separation used to evaluate the Lagrangian derivative along a fluid parcel trajectory has to be taken into account to reduce precision error. By comparing Lagrangian and Eulerian approaches, the latter is restricted to shorter time separations and is found not applicable to evaluate pressure gradient field if a relative precision error lower than 10% is required. Finally, the pressure evaluated from tomographic velocity measurements is compared to that obtained from simulated planar ones to discuss the effect of 3D flow phenomena on the accuracy of the proposed technique.