Design and construction of a Miniature PIV (MPIV) system

For two decades, there has been an active research to enhance the performances of Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) systems. However, the resulting systems are somewhat very costly, cumbersome and delicate. In this paper, we address the design and some first experimental results of a PIV system belonging to the opposite paradigm. The Miniature PIV or MPIV system features relatively modest performances, but is considerably smaller (our MPIV could hold in dia. 40 mm x 120 mm), cheaper (our MPIV total cost is less than $ 500) and easy to handle, Potential applications include industrial velocity sensors, The proposed MPIV system uses a one-chip-only CMOS camera with digital output. Only two other chips are needed, one for a buffer memory and one for an interfacing logic that controls the system. Images are transferred to a personal computer (PC or laptop) via its standard parallel port. No extra hardware is required (in particular, no frame grabber board is needed). In our first MPIV prototype presented in this paper, the strobe lighting is generated by a cheap 5 mW laser pointer diode. Experimental results are presented and discussed.