Experimental Apparatus, Analyses and Comparisons of the Feature Matching and Lucas-Kanade Software to Measure Dust Particle Velocities

The mobilisation of dust during Loss of Vacuum Accidents is crucial to provide detailed answers to security and safety issues of many nuclear and industrial plants. The experimental apparatus STARDUST-Upgrade can replicate Loss of Vacuum Accidents in different conditions and the fluid dynamics related to these experiments has been deeply investigated. In this work, the authors provide a detailed description of the optical experimental setups and software developed and used to track dust particle velocities. These techniques are based on the particle tracking velocimetry. Two different experimental setups are used to take into account the different optical properties of dust, each image obtained during the experiments has been analysed with customized software. The algorithms used to develop the software are the feature matching algorithm and the Lucas-Kanade algorithm. In this paper, the two algorithms and their results are discussed separately and then a comparison of the data obtained is presented.