Non-stereoscopic 3D particle tracking velocimetry for full scale rooms

We are building a particle tracking systemfor the measurement of convective heat transfersand pollutants displacements in full scale rooms.To increase the depth of the zone of interest, thesystem is non stereoscopic and do not use laserlight. The flow is seeded with 3mm-largeneutrally buoyant helium filled soap bubbles.Illumination is provided by white continuouslight. The seeded flow (air) is recorded by 3high-speed digital video cameras located alongthree different planes. The experiment is takingplace in a 3.1*3.1*2.5m3 (W*D*H) test roomwhose boundary conditions and inner values liketemperature, air velocity and solar radiation canbe imposed and monitored. A specially designedtracking algorithm has been built and is beingtested. The main features of the algorithm aredescribed in this paper. Especially, ourprocedure to adress the correspondance problemby identifying individual particles thanks to their3D coordinates is explained. Some early resultsare shown.