Please note: This is a Sole Source Notification. Our lab undertakes experimental research in high Reynolds number turbulent flows. Since turbulent flows have a large range of time-scales and spatial scales, we need instrumentation that can document velocity information in large spatial domain along with a large spatial resolution. Additionally, the system should resolve all of the velocity information in time with very high temporal resolution. In our case, we are interested in a camera resolution of 7 – 9 Megapixel, and sampling rates of 1000Hz – 30000Hz. We also need high power lasers and smoke generators that can enable sufficient fidelity in the measurement system. In addition to featuring the high spatio-temporal resolution, the system should be able to handle high data throughput rates (10GB/s) in order to sustain continuous experiments. The next alternative is to consider a PIV system of low spatio-temporal resolution available from the same vendor. However, this would hamper the research as a system of lower spatial resolution results in filtering of the signal and this is accentuated for high Reynolds number flows. Similarly, a system with lower temporal resolution results in inaccurate representation of data, through aliasing and filtering and this results in questionable data that cannot promise repeatability, which is a key requirement for publishable work. It also suspends the utilization by the broader research community to validate numerical simulations.
