Pressure Reconstruction from Time-resolved Tomographic PIV Data Using CFD Technique

One common method to reconstruct the pressure field form experimental velocity field is to solve the pressure Poisson equation. The Poisson equation for pressure can be solved numerically (e.g., Finite Difference and Finite Volume Method) or analytically (e.g., Green-function-based integration). Standard CFD solvers (FVM based solvers) offer powerful and efficient tools that can be used to compute the pressure field from PIV velocity field. Unlike the FDM based solvers, these solvers can easily handle unstructured grid and complex geometry. In this work, the pressure field for synthetic jet impingement is reconstructed from time resolved, tomo-PIV data using a CFD technique. A standard solver (pisoFOAM), available within the popular open source CFD package OpenFOAM, is modified and used to interpolate the experimental velocimetry data on the CFD grid and solve the pressure Poisson equation. The modified solver can handle different combination of mixed boundary conditions and various forms of the governing equation. The reconstructed pressure fields are compared with a pressure sensor and with the pressure field computed with a FDM based solver.