Limitations of temperature measurements with holographic interferometry in the presence of pressure variations

In recent years oscillatory flows have shown to be a promising strategy to enhance heat transfer. However, the mechanisms underlying oscillatory heat transfer enhancement are not yet completely understood. One problem, when investigating heat transfer in oscillatory flows experimentally, is to resolve the temperature distribution as a function of time. This is one reason that most studies reported in the literature so far were restricted to frequencies of a few hertz. As shown in this paper, an appropriate tool to investigate oscillatory heat transfer phenomena at higher frequencies (1000 Hz) is real time holographic interferometry (HI) combined with high-speed cinematography. In the present paper HI was applied to study acoustically driven flow. To apply HI to such a physical situation it was necessary to expand its applicability to cases where changes in the refractive index are caused not only by temperature changes but also by pressure variations. For this purpose a new evaluation formula that accounts for pressure variations was derived. On the example of the acoustic field, we discuss the impact of the pressure variations on temperature measurements. Additionally, an image processing algorithm was developed that allows the measurement of time dependent temperature distributions. The uncertainties of the temperature measurements introduced by the image processing algorithm were found to be in the range of thermocouple measurements.