Please note: This is a Sole Source Notification. After doing extensive research on PIV systems, the MiniShaker system from LaVision is the only system found that has an integrated 4-camera system to make it easy to set up PIV experiments for a variety of both planar and volumetric PIV measurements. PIV is traditionally difficult to set up and touchy to get positioned correctly, but this design makes it feasible to use in an undergraduate lab setting since the cameras are pre-aligned in one mechanical piece rather than needing to be carefully placed in separate locations, and since the system provides self-calibration capabilities. It has pre-aligned cameras with changeable camera lenses (focal lengths from 4 mm to 50 mm to give a range of fields of view needed to cover the department’s PIV needs), and camera specs that will give the quality of data needed. Additionally, the DaVis software that is provided in this quote is a powerful tool to make it easy to do PIV, including capturing images, analyzing data, giving velocity and pressure fields both of steady and time-varying data, providing error analysis, visualizing data and exporting data to formats that can be used with software that students already use regularly. The system is also readily upgradeable should additional capabilities be needed in the future.
