Imaging of a convective field in a rectangular cavity using interferometry, schlieren and shadowgraph

The present study is concerned with the quantitative imaging of buoyancy-driven convection in a fluid medium that is confined in a horizontal differentially heated rectangular cavity. The horizontal surfaces of the cavity provide a temperature difference, for initiating convection in the fluid. The vertical side walls are thermally insulated. Three imaging techniques, namely laser interferometry, schlieren, and shadowgraph have been utilized. Experiments have been conducted in a cavity of length 447 mm and 32 mm vertical height. The cavity is square in cross-section, and the imaging direction is parallel to its longer side. Convection in air and water have been investigated. Temperature differences in the range of 5–50 K for air and 3–10 K for water have been employed in the experiments. Quantities of interest are the temperature profiles in unsteadiness in the thermal field. At lower temperature differences across the fluid region, temperatures as recorded by interferometry and schlieren are in good agreement with each other. Further, they match the numerical predictions, as well as correlations available in the literature. Imaging based on shadowgraph is not as satisfactory at lower temperature differences. At larger cavity temperature differences, the shadowgraph images become clear enough for quantitative analysis, but the flow becomes time-dependent. The three techniques reveal similar trends in terms of the spatial distribution of temperature gradients and the time scales of unsteadiness. The schlieren and shadowgraph are more suitable for high gradients and interferometry is suitable for low gradients and all these three techniques are not flow visualization tools alone but are appropriate for quantitative imaging of thermal field.