Image-based System for 3D Visualization of Flow in Hydrodynamic Tunnel

Aircraft safety depends on wing flow process, so the study of air flow in different flight conditions is one of the most important parts of aircraft design and exploiting. The effective method of aerodynamic processes modeling is experiment in wind (aerodynamic) tunnel or water (hydrodynamic) tunnel. They allow to perform experiments with a scaled model of an aircraft affected by icing and to visualize the wing flow process and changes caused by icing. A visualization and video registration of the wing flow yields useful qualitative information about flow, but it is more important to retrieve quantitative 3D data of flow for 3D visualization and analysis. The presented study addresses to creating an image-based system for accurate 3D flow acquisition for further diverse 3D visualization and quantitate evaluation of 3D flow parameters in a hydrodynamic tunnel for aircraft icing influence exploration. Being an initial part of a long- term research project, this study is aimed at developing stereolithography (SLA) modeling technique for flow visualization in hydrodynamic tunnel and a photogrammetric system for accurate flow 3D caption. The results of first experiments of the system calibration and application are given along with preliminary results of flow jets 3D reconstruction.