Hybrid Adaptive Wavelet-Based Optical Flow Algorithm for Background Oriented Schlieren (BOS) Experiments

Quantitative analysis of the flow field is an effective method to study hydrodynamics. As a flow field measurement technology, the Background Oriented Schlieren (BOS) is widely used. However, it is difficult to measure the complex transparent flow field (flow field with large refractive index gradient) using the BOS experiment. In order to overcome this difficulty and improve the accuracy of the BOS experiment, this paper presents a hybrid adaptive wavelet-based optical flow algorithm for the BOS. The current algorithm is a combination of the traditional optical flow algorithm and the wavelet-based optical flow algorithm. By adding the initial value constraints, the adaptive scale constraints, and the adaptive regularization constraints, the algorithm can effectively overcome the above-mentioned difficulty and also improve its accuracy. To further illustrate the feasibility of the proposed method, this paper uses the simulation data, the data of the DNS datasets, and the data of the BOS experiment to verify the performance of the algorithm. The experiment of comparing the proposed algorithm with the existing ones is carried out on the DNS datasets and the data of the BOS experiment. Finally, the proposed method is verified by a practical BOS experiment. The results show that the proposed algorithm can effectively improve the measurement accuracy of displacements.