smartPIV – a smartphone app for flow visualization in lab courses

Fluid mechanics and laser optical diagnostics are often seen as complex and difficult by students.

To lower the barrier to introduce particle image velocimetry (PIV) in lab courses and gain an intuitive understanding of fluid mechanics we developed the smartphone application named ‘smartPIV’. This app provides velocity measurements using correlation-based approaches or optical flow methods. Using smartphones and a cw-laser lowers the costs and the complexity of such systems for lab courses. On the other hand, students are familiar with smartphone apps for video capturing and evaluation and get results quickly. Also, from the scientific point of view the app can be applied in the field or generate data for lab reports. The relative uncertainty was shown to be less than 8%, which is reasonable for quick velocity estimates.