Particle Image Velocimetry measurement of indoor airflow field: A review of the technologies and applications

Quantifying the airflow field in building room or vehicle cabin indoor space is crucial for creating a thermal comfortable and healthy indoor environment. Airflow field measurement can provide quantitative information of indoor air distribution and local air velocity around occupants or passengers, which has strong relationship with the ventilation effectiveness, the pollutant transportation and the energy conservation in a building or a vehicle. However, the airflow field in indoor environment is normally characterized by high turbulent level and unsteady due to relatively low air velocity from the diffuser, thermal plume of heat source and unsteady perturbation of occupants ’ behavior. Generally, it is very difficult to conduct accurate and detailed measurement of such a complex turbulent flow field with point-wise anemometry. Therefore, using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) is a promising technique to solve this problem. This paper firstly gave an introduction of the typical PIV technologies used in indoor environment measurement, and then summarized the state-of-the-art applications of PIV in measuring the indoor airflow fields. The overview shows tha