Uncertainty Quantification for PTV/LPT data and Adaptive Track Filtering

Abstract

Particle Tracking Velocimetry (PTV) or Lagrangian Particle Tracking (LPT) picked up a lot of interest over the last years due to their ability to acquire global flow fields at high spatial and temporal resolution. The most recent research focused mainly on algorithmic advancements in order to increase the obtainable data density and on its application to new flow cases. Only a small amount of studies tried to quantify the measurement uncertainties linked to these volumetric measurement approaches. Within this contribution we want to present how to acquire measurement uncertainties for the position, velocity and acceleration for each data point along a trajectory by means of linear regression analysis tools. Based on these uncertainties, an adaptive filtering approach is introduced, which eliminates the user’s choice of the filter kernel length and which automatically determines its optimal value.