Experiments in Fluids 38 (2005) 146160
DOI 10.1007/s00348-004-0873-4
A comparison between snapshot POD analysis of PIV velocity
and vorticity data
J. Kostas, J. Soria, M. S. Chong
146
Abstract Proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) was
performed on both the fluctuating velocity and vorticity
fields of a backward-facing step (BFS) flow at Reynolds
numbers of 580 and 4,660. The data was obtained from
particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements. The
vorticity decomposition captured the fluctuating enstro-
phy more efficiently than the equivalent velocity field
decomposition for a given number of modes. Coherent
structures in the flow are also more easily identifiable
using vorticity-based POD. A common structure of the
low-order vorticity POD modes suggests that a large-scale
similarity, independent of the Reynolds number, may be
present for the BFS flow. The POD modes obtained from a
vorticity-based decomposition would help in determining
a basis for constructing simplified vortex skeletons and
low-order flow descriptions based on the vorticity of tur-
bulent flows.
1 value decomposition (SVD) and empirical eigenfunction
Introduction
1.1
Proper orthogonal decomposition (POD)
It is nowadays accepted that turbulent flows are charac-
terised by organised motions, commonly referred to as
coherent structures, within which most of the essential
flow physics is believed to be buried. Understanding their
dynamics and interactions with other coherent structures
in the flow will lead to an increased understanding of
turbulence and its control. The process of identifying flow
patterns in experimental and computer-generated data is
by no means a trivial task, since they are, more often than
Received: 8 October 2003 / Accepted: 15 August 2004
Published online: 12 January 2005

Springer-Verlag 2005
J. Kostas, J. Soria (&)
Laboratory for Turbulence Research in Aerospace and Combustion,
Mechanical Engineering Department, Monash University,
3800 Monash, Victoria, Australia
E-mail: julio.soria@eng.monash.edu.au
M. S. Chong
Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering Department,
Melbourne University, 3052 Melbourne,
Victoria, Australia
The financial support of the Australian Research Council (ARC)
is greatly appreciated.
not, hidden amongst the incoherent turbulent motions. In
addition, the volume of data can be so large that it must be
summarised in a concise manner so that the most useful
information about the physical processes may be
extracted.
Proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) has proved
to be an effective method for identifying dominant fea-
tures and events in experimental and numerical data. It
has the added advantage of effectively compressing or
summarising large quantities of data so that the most
useful information about the physical processes occur-
ring may be extracted. It was first introduced in the
context of turbulence by Lumley (1967), but was sug-
gested independently by several researchers before this,
including Kosambi (1943), Loe`ve (1945), Karhunen
(1946), Pougachev (1953) and Obukhov (1954) (see
Berkooz et al. 1993 for more details on these references).
POD also goes by the names Karhunen-Loe`ve decompo-
sition, principal component analysis (PCA), singular
decomposition, amongst others. Its uses vary: random
variable analysis, image processing, signal analysis, data
compression, process identification and control in
chemical engineering, oceanography, even psychology
and economics (see Berkooz et al. (1993) for references
on each discipline).
When performing a POD of a flow, we are looking for
fluid motions that contribute most to the energy of the
flow (defined as the mean square fluctuating value of the
flow variable under investigation). The decomposition
(akin to a Fourier series decomposition) results in a set of
modes that represent an average spatial description of
structures containing most of the energy and which are
predominantly associated with large-scale structures. They
do not necessarily have to correspond to coherent struc-
tures. The modes may also correspond to events in the
flow that contribute the most, in a statistical sense, to the
energy of the flow.
In recent years, POD has begun to gain widespread use
as a technique for identifying not only the dominant fea-
tures in flowscoherent structuresbut also for con-
structing low-dimensional models that describe the
principal flow dynamics with the least number of modes
(Bonnet 1988; Kevlahan 1994). A POD analysis requires
the knowledge of the two-point spatial correlation func-
tion, which can be found using multi-point measurements
such as rakes of hot-wire probes, scalar visualisation data,
particle image velocimetry (PIV) data and 2-D and 3-D
direct numerical simulation data. Naturally, using POD on
3-D data is the preferred choice for a full understanding of
turbulent flow physics.
Despite its usefulness in the extraction of dominant
flow structures, the application of POD has limitations.
The less deterministic a flow is, the less efficiently it will be
represented by the POD expansion. For example, the ki-
netic energy in a low Reynolds number, laminar flow with
a limited range of length scales and spatially localised flow
features may be almost entirely captured with ten modes.
At a high Reynolds number, the same flow may be tur-
bulent, with a variety of length scales present over the
entire domain. In this case, the POD analysis may require
several hundred modes to capture a large contribution
of the kinetic energy in the flow. The analysis also
de-emphasises infrequent events, although they may be
dynamically important, such as the intermittent phenom-
ena occurring in turbulent boundary layers, i.e. bursts,
sweeps and ejections. The temporal averaging often per-
formed during the POD procedure is somewhat arbitrary
and not necessarily the best choice for capturing the
dominant behaviour of a system (Graham and Kevrekidis
1996). Finally, since the technique is based on time aver-
aged correlations, the POD modes only represent time
average information about flow structures.
If a random field is homogeneous or periodic in one or
more directions, the eigenfunctions returned from the POD
analysis are Fourier modes. In such circumstances, Fourier
transforms of the data are often used in these directions, but
these lead to a poor local description of the flow structures
in the physical space. Furthermore, a reduced order model
using Fourier modes must typically retain many modes to
adequately capture the dynamics. To overcome this limi-
tation, techniques such as shot-noise decomposition (Arndt
et al. 1997; Herzog 1986; Holmes et al. 1996; Moin and
Moser 1989) may be applied to gain a physical description
of the flow structure. Alternatively, data preprocessing
techniques known as template fitting and centering (Rowley
and Marsden 2000) avoid imposing Fourier modes as the
POD eigenfunctions by effectively performing the POD
analysis in a travelling reference frame.
1.2
Application of POD to wall-bounded flow data
Liu et al. (1994) applied POD to PIV data of a turbulent
channel flow to determine whether the eigenfunctions and
eigenvalues obtained from a 1-D POD analysis on the
outer flow exhibited Reynolds-number-independence
when scaled by the outer variables. If this was so, then one
set of eigenfunctions could be used to represent flows over
a range of Reynolds number. This study was conducted at
Reynolds numbers of Re=5,378 and 29,935, based on the
bulk velocity and the channel half width. Their results
indicated that, in the region outside the wall layer, the
computed eigenfunctions and eigenvalues exhibited simi-
larity when scaled by outer variables and, hence, were
independent of the Reynolds number.
Huang (1994) performed a POD analysis on a low
aspect ratio backward-facing step (BFS) flow at a Reynolds
number of Reh
4,300. The PIV data consisted of 250
instantaneous, sequential velocity fields. Due to the high
spatial resolution of the data, 691201 (u, v) velocity
components per vector field, the snapshot POD technique
was employed to reduce the computational effort involved.
Unfortunately, the sampling period, 10 s, was insufficient
to ensure that each set of data was stationary in the mean,
but this was unavoidable due to limited computer re-
sources. Nevertheless, Huang (1994) found 75% of the
energy resided in the first 50 modes. This was considered a
relatively poor energy convergence compared to decom-
positions of other flows where a large proportion of the
energy was captured in relatively few modes (Delville et al.
1999; Gordeyev 1999; Hilberg et al. 1994; Kirby et al. 1990;
147
Rajaee et al. 1994). The poor energy convergence was
attributed to the large variety of scales present throughout
the flow. An appreciable phase correlation was exhibited
between the time-dependent coefficients of the first two
modes, leading the author to conclude that the second POD
mode contained part of the structure described by the first
mode which had decayed in energy and scale. This
behaviour was also observed in the spatial structure of the
modes. A significant phase correlation was not observed
for the time-dependent coefficients of the higher modes.
An investigation of the time-dependent behaviour of the
modes revealed two types of motion present in the recir-
culation region of the flow: a swing motion and an
expansion and compression motion. These motions
were observed to decrease in amplitude with increasing
mode order, and were not detectable after ten modes, due
to the limited accuracy of the motion detection technique.
A POD analysis was also performed on the vorticity field
and the results were compared with those obtained from
the velocity decomposition. The convergence of energy in
the vorticity eigenvalue spectrum was found to be worse
than that of the velocity spectrum, with more vorticity
modes required to recover a given energy fraction. How-
ever, this result is misleading, since, in this comparison,
two different quantities are being compared, i.e. the frac-
tion of kinetic energy recovered is being compared to the
fraction of enstrophy recovered. Comparisons were also
made between the spatial structure of the vorticity modes
and the vorticity of the velocity modes. There was good
agreement between the lowest order mode of each, but
little similarity between the remaining corresponding
modes.
In another study, Jrgensen (1997) applied POD to the
perturbed and unperturbed flow over a wall-mounted
fence. PIV was used to acquire 500 instantaneous velocity
fields, each containing 6258 (u, v) components. A 2-D
POD analysis was performed on the entire set of data and
resulted in an 81% and 73% energy recovery for the
unperturbed and perturbed cases, respectively, using the
first 20 modes. This result suggested a greater diversity of
flow structure from increased 3-D effects as a result of the
perturbations.
Adrian et al. (2000) used POD as a filtering tool on
the PIV data of a fully developed turbulent channel flow at
a Reynolds number of Re=5,378 (based on the bulk
velocity and half height of the channel). This technique
identified structures based on the size of their spatial or
temporal extent in the flow. The POD procedure was found
to be particularly effective at taking into account the
inhomogeneous spatial distribution of the various eddy
 scales, i.e. small eddies close to the wall, large eddies fur-
ther away. A reconstructed/filtered velocity field using the
12 most dominant modes recovered 48% of the total en-
ergy and 75% of the total Reynolds shear stress, u0 v0 ; in the
flow.
A 3-D snapshot POD analysis of a transitional, spatially
evolving boundary layer was performed by Rempfer and
Fasel (1994b). Data for this analysis was taken from a
direct numerical simulation by Rist and Fasel (1995). The
flow domain was split into three regions, each corre-
148
sponding to approximately two Tollmien-Schlichting
wavelengths and the corresponding eigenfunctions were
determined by applying POD separately to each of the sub-
domains. The analysis identified first-order structures that
corresponded to structures which are also observed in
experiments, namely L vortices. As the flow developed and
increased in spatial complexity, the contribution of the
first-order structure to the energy of the fluctuating flow
was found to be reduced. The contribution decreased from
95% in the first region, to 86% in the second, to 53% in the
last region. As a consequence, more and more modes were
required to adequately represent the flow field as it
evolved, since the energy was now shared more evenly
between the modes.
1.3
Appropriate choice of variable to use in POD
In the majority of investigations using POD to investigate
flow structure, the decomposition has already been per-
formed on velocity data. The aim was to capture most of
the kinetic energy in the flow using the least number of
modes possible. However, the velocity is not the ideal
quantity to use for coherent structure identification since
the deduced structure in the flow will depend on the
velocity of the observer (Perry and Chong 1994). Thus, the
modes obtained from a POD analysis of the velocity data
may be misinterpreted as a result of observing them in an
inappropriate reference frame. A Galilean invariant
quantity is preferable for an unambiguous identification of
coherent structures in the flow. Given the definition of a
coherent structure by Hussain (1986), the idea that, per-
haps, vorticity may be a better quantity to study than
velocity has been suggested, with the additional benefit
that the vorticity field is a Galilean invariant quantity. A
POD analysis on vorticity has the potential to be used for
the construction of simplified flow models based on vortex
skeletons extracted from the modes. Such simplified flow
models have been proposed by Perry and Chong (1987)
and have aided in determining the type of structures that
are most important in governing the gross flow behav-
iourthe genetic code of the flow, as put by Perry and
Chong (1987).
The vorticity equation, shown in Eq. 1, rather than the
Navier-Stokes equation, could be used to construct and
investigate low-order dynamical models using vorticity
basis functions obtained from POD. The vorticity equation
also has the added advantage of eliminating the pressure
term:
@x
u  rx x  ru mr2 x 1
@t
A foreseeable problem arises from using only the vorticity
POD modes when a Galerkin projection of Eq. 1 is to be
performed. The vorticity equation contains both velocity
and vorticity terms, and so, it would be useful to obtain a
relationship between the velocity and vorticity modes. The
POD modes in the snapshot technique are based upon
finding the eigenvalues and eigenfunctions of the temporal
correlation matrix, Eq. 13. For velocity data,Cmn is com-
puted using:
Z
1
Cmnvel um  un dx 2
M D
whereas the vorticity formulation requires the calculation
of:
Z
1
Cmnvort r  um  r  un dx 3
M D
The presence of products of curl terms suggests that there
is no simple relation between the velocity eigenfunctions
and the vorticity eigenfunctions. It is, therefore, necessary
to use the Biot-Savart law, shown in Eq. 4, to obtain
velocity modes from their vorticity counterparts:
Z
1 s  xx0
ux  dV x0 s x  x0 4
4p jsj3
Here u(x), is the velocity at a point, x, in the flow due to
the contributions of the induced velocity by the vorticity at
every other point in the flow, x(x).
The study by Rempfer and Fasel (1994a) addressed a
similar issue when attempting a Galerkin projection of the
vorticity equation using their computed velocity modes. In
that study, it was necessary to take the curl of the velocity
modes, which is a somewhat simpler task than using the
Biot-Savart law, particularly in 3-D, to obtain the vorticity
modes. These, in conjunction with the existing velocity
modes, were then used as a basis for the projection of the
vorticity equation. The matrix r  uk ; r  ul was
found to be almost diagonal, indicating that the curl of the
velocity modes did not quite form an orthogonal system,
but were almost identical to the vorticity modes.
Although the vorticity equation has the advantage over
the Navier-Stokes equations in that it has no pressure
term, it requires the knowledge of both the velocity and
vorticity basis functions for a Galerkin projection. If a
POD analysis on the vorticity was performed, the task of
determining the velocity basis functions would be a sig-
nificantly more computationally intensive task than
extracting the vorticity basis functions from a velocity-
based POD analysis.
However, a quantity suited for coherent structure
identification, such as vorticity, may give a less efficient
decomposition (in terms of the mean square fluctuating
value) than a quantity describing flow kinematics, such as
velocity, hence, requiring more modes to completely de-
scribe the flow. The reasons for applying the POD tech-
nique in the first place, i.e. low-order flow descriptions,
coherent structure identification, dynamical flow models,
investigation of turbulence quantities etc., will necessitate
the appropriate variable to use.
 The idea behind POD analysis is to find a function basis bulent flows (especially wall-bounded flows). It also serves
w(k)(x) that most faithfully represents a random vector to illustrate the effectiveness of vorticity POD analysis as
function, f(x, t), using the form: an objective means of identifying dominant features in
flows.
X
K
k k
f x; t
a t w x 5
k1
2
such that Eq. 5 describes f(x, t) better than any other POD implementation
representation of the same dimension using any other The data used for the POD analysis in the present
function basis. investigation comprises 2-D flow quantities, i.e. (u, v)
Using the definition of the inner product of two velocity components and xz, the out-of-plane vorticity
component, sampled instantaneously in an orthogonal 149
quantities f and w, we obtain:
Z xy coordinate plane over a time period T:. Due to the
f ; w  f x; t w xdx 6 large number spatial points in the domain, roughly
D 8,000, and a greater number of spatial points in the
domain than the number of frames, the snapshot tech-
where * represents the complex conjugate, the energy of
nique (Sirovich 1987) was employed to reduce the
the flow based on the velocity, uand the vorticity x yields
computational effort involved in the POD procedure.
the following results:
The presence of two inhomogeneous directions in the
1 1 flow (streamwise, x and cross stream, y) meant that
Kinetic energy density qu; u qkuk2 7 techniques such as shot-noise decomposition, template
2 2
fitting or centering are not required.
Enstrophy density x; x kxk2 8 Each 2-D field at time tn will be referred to as a snap-
shot, the total number of snapshots being M. The data
Hence, applying POD to u and x will categorise structures exists at discrete points on a rectangular grid with Nx
according to their contribution of kinetic energy and points in the x direction and Ny points in the y direction.
enstrophy in the flow. Note that these quantities are always Note that POD analysis may also be performed on any sub-
positive definite. domain, so that the resulting eigenfunctions are repre-
The data obtained from PIV measurements is well sentative of that sub-domain only. For example, in a
suited to POD analysis. Current experimental PIV tech- turbulent boundary layer flow, POD analysis may be per-
niques are capable of acquiring several hundred instan- formed on the wall and outer layers separately, rather than
taneous two-component, two-dimensional (2C-2D) on the whole flow itself. This approach may be advanta-
velocity fields on which 1-D or 2-D POD may be applied. geous if there is a distribution of scales throughout the
The out-of-plane vorticity field may be obtained from this flow domain. However, the connection between the
data by computing the curl of the velocity field. empirical eigenfunctions obtained from a sub-domain and
The correct identification of a coherent structure in a the entire domain is unclear at this stage and requires
turbulent flow requires the complete 3-D, three-compo- further investigation.
nent velocity and velocity gradient tensor fields (Chong The average snapshot was calculated and subtracted
et al. 1990). Since this information is not available from from each member of the ensemble, leaving only data
PIV data, an alternative means of identifying the presence containing deviations from the mean. Considering the
of coherent structures in the flow is used, based upon the velocity field at this point, u(x,y), the average snapshot is
available information. Throughout this investigation, a calculated using:
large out-of-plane vorticity concentration above the
background vorticity level will be considered as repre- 1X M
senting a coherent feature or structure.
x; y
u ux; y; tn 9
M n1
A further advantage of using vorticity in the POD
analysis of a flow is that the overall number of computa- and the resulting adjusted snapshots of data are given by:
tions is reduced, since there is only one component of
vorticity compared to two velocity components (each u0 x; y; tn ux; y; tn  u

x; y 10
vorticity component effectively contains information from
two spatial velocity gradients). Naturally, this only applies In two dimensions, the two-point averaged spatial
to two-component, planar data, such as that obtained from correlation function for the fluctuating quantities is:
PIV measurements. It should be noted that applying POD Z
1 T 0
to vorticity data containing only one component will not Rx; x0 ; y; y0 lim u x; y; t u0 x0 ; y0 ; t dt
T!1 T 0
categorise structures according to their enstrophy content,
but only to their magnitude of out-of-plane vorticity. This 11
quantity is, strictly speaking, a quasi-enstrophy, since only
one component of enstrophy is utilised. However, it will which can be approximated by:
still be referred to as an enstrophy in this investigation. 1X M
The purpose of this study is to investigate the relative Rx; x0 ; y; y0 u0 x; y; tn u0 x0 ; y0 ; tn 12
merits of using velocity or vorticity POD analysis in tur- M n1
 since the integration in Eq. 11 is only performed with re- Finally, a reconstruction of any of the original snapshots
spect to t. Following the same procedure as outlined by using an arbitrary number of modes, K, was performed
Sirovich (1987), the correlation matrix for the snaphot using:
technique, C, may be derived as:
ZZ X
K
1 ux; y; tn
u

x; y ank wk x 17
Cmn u0 x; y; tm u0 x0 ; y0 ; tn dxdy 13 k1
M D
The numerical evaluation of the integral in Eq. 13 was
carried out using the trapezoidal rule for each of the 3
integrations, along with an appropriate choice of inner Experimental facilities and diagnostics
150 product for each of the flow quantities. Here, the
common Euclidean inner product or L2-norm was used. 3.1
The eigenfunctions for each mode were determined Water tunnel
using: The experimental investigations were conducted in the
X
M water tunnel shown schematically in Fig. 1a, b. This is a
wk x; y Unk u0 x; y; tn 14 closed-circuit, horizontal facility with five 1-m long
n1 working sections, each of 500500-mm cross-section. Flow
uniformity is achieved with a perforated stainless steel
The expansion coefficients of each mode were calculated plate, a honeycomb and a series of stainless steel screens in
by projecting the original PIV data onto the calculated the settling chamber. The perforated plate (5-mm hole size
modes: with a 23% open area ratio) is placed immediately after the
PN y PN x h 0

i spray system, followed by four screens of decreasing mesh
j1 i1 u xi ; yj ; tn wk xi ; yj
ank PN P h size in the streamwise direction. The honeycomb section
Nx k


i 15
(12 mm diameter cell size and 120 mm cell width) is in-
y
j1 i1 w xi ; yj wk xi ; yj
serted between the first and second screens to straighten
This expression the flow and remove any mean swirl. A 10:1 contraction
 is simplified
 by making use of the nor-
ratio is used prior to the first working section to further
k l
malisation, w ; w kk dkl : reduce the turbulence intensity by accelerating the mean
Nx h
flow. A maximum flow speed of 775 mm/s is achievable in
Ny
1 XX

i the working sections with the current 53-kW AC motor
ank u0 xi ; yj ; tn wk xi ; yj 16
kk j1 i1 and the in-line centrifugal pump system. The motor pump

Fig. 1. Closed-circuit horizon-

tal water tunnel used in the
experiments. The measure-
ments were taken in working
section3c. (1) Settling cham-
ber. (2) 10:1 contraction ratio.
(3) Working sections. (4) Ple-
num chamber. (5) Rear
observation window. (6) Re-
turn pipeworksuction side.
(7) Filtration isolating valve.
(8) AC motorcentrifugal
pump system. (9) Orifice plate.
(10) Return pipe-
workpressure side. (11)
Water filtration circuit
system speed is controlled with an ABB Sami GS frequency Table 1. Boundary layer properties 18 mm ( 2.25h) upstream
controller, which allows incremental steps in tunnel speed from step. The turbulence intensity values were measured in
the freestream. Water properties were evaluated at 25C and
of 1 mm/s over the entire flow speed range. A plenum 100 kPa for Reh=580 and 35C and 100 kPa for Reh=4,660
chamber attached to the final working section diffuses the
flow and returns it via a 300-mm diameter pipe to the Reh=580 Reh=4,660
pump. Perforated stainless steel plates in the plenum
chamber (10-mm hole size with a 40% open area ratio), U 65 mm/s 425 mm/s
urms
1.1% 1.0%
placed vertically and parallel to the working section walls, U1
Rex
150103
1106
ensure minimal disturbance to the upstream working Red 3,317 24,427
section flow while effectively redirecting the flow through Red* 608 3,177
180 into the return pipe. A diatomaceous earth pool filter Reh 373 2,384
d 45.8 mm 41.9 mm 151
system running in parallel with the main return flow
pipework removes contaminants from the water down to a d* 8.4 mm 5.5 mm
h 5.1 mm 4.1 mm
level of 5 lm. The filtration can be activated at any time, us 3.43 mm/s 18.60 mm/s
but it is never operated during the experiments.

3.2 separation (18 mm 2.25h upstream from the trailing

Backward-facing step (BFS) experiments
The flow geometry used in the BFS experiments is shown
in Fig. 2. An 8-mm thick plate positioned 131 mm above
the tunnel floor, ensuring that the turbulent boundary
layer flow was independent of the tunnel floor boundary
layer, constituted the BFS. This resulted in an aspect ratio
(step span/step height) and an expansion ratio (y2/y1) of
62 and 1.02, respectively. The experiments were conducted
at two different freestream velocities,U=65 mm/s and
U=425 mm/s, yielding Reynolds numbers based on step
height, Reh=580 and Reh=4,660, respectively. A 5:1 semi-
ellipse was glued on the leading edge of the BFS plate as
shown in Fig. 2 to minimise large-scale flow separation.
Given the relatively low Reynolds number of the
boundary layer in the experiment (Reg<6,000, see Erm and
Joubert 1991), a trip device was used to facilitate its
transition to the turbulent state. The boundary layer was
tripped using a roughness element that was placed
117 mm downstream from the leading edge and consisted
of small acrylic blocks 16-mm long by 5-mm wide by
6-mm high, glued onto a 2-mm thick polycarbonate strip
at 14-mm spanwise intervals. The distance from the
boundary layer trip to the trailing edge of the plate was
1,850 mm (
360h for Reh=580 and
450h for Reh=4,660).
The results of Erm and Joubert (1991) show that mean-
flow profiles, broadband-turbulence profiles and spectra
are found to be affected very little by the type of trip device
used (wire, distributed grit, pins) for Reg
1,000 and above,
indicating an absence of dependence on the flow history
for this Reg range. The boundary layer properties prior to
edge of the plate) for the two BFS flow Reynolds numbers
investigated are shown in Table 1.
3.3
Experimental measurement technique
Multigrid cross-correlation digital PIV (MCCDPIV) anal-
ysis of single-exposed digital images was used to acquire
instantaneous, in-plane velocity field measurements of the
various flows. A Kodak Megaplus XHF camera
(1,0001,000 pixels CCD array size, 8-bit greyscale) was
used to acquire singly-exposed images for the low
Reynolds number BFS flow. A maximum framing rate of
30 Hz meant a minimum of 32.9 ms between successive
frames was achievable, hence, its suitability for only the
low speed flow. A PCO Sensicam cross-correlation camera
(1,2801,024 pixels CCD array size, 12-bit greyscale) was
used to image the high Reynolds number BFS flow. A
minimum time separation between successive images of
200 ns and an acquisition rate of four frame pairs per
second was achievable with this camera.
Each camera was controlled by a separate Pentium
based PC using image acquisition and timing software.
The number of images capable of being acquired was
dependent on the available PC RAM and the size of frame
acquired. The Kodak camera was limited to 32 full-size
image pairs while the PCO camera was limited to 114 full-
size image pairs. Direct acquisition to hard disk permitted
a larger number of frames to be acquired, albeit at a
reduced framing rate. Synchronisation of the lasers and
digital camera was achieved by sending TTL signals to the

Fig. 2. Flow geometry for the

backward-facing step (BFS).
The boundary layer is
tripped just downstream of
the 5:1 elliptical leading
edge. The step height is
h=8 mm, y1=359 mm,
y2=367 mm. The mean reat-
tachment length is represented
by XR
 appropriate devices using the PCs parallel port. The
timing accuracy of this technique is of the order of 10 ls.
Illumination of the seeding particles in the flow was
achieved with twin, frequency-doubled Nd:YAG lasers,
each capable of producing a 6-ns, 400-mJ pulse with a
pulse repetition frequency of 12 Hz. An appropriate
combination of cylindrical lenses yielded a 150-mm wide
by 2-mm thick collimated light sheet on entry to the test
section. The flow was seeded with 11-lm hollow glass
spheres having a specific gravity of 1.1. A 105-mm Micro
Nikkor lens used for imaging provided a field of view of
152
approximately 4040 mm ( 5h5h) for the Kodak cam-
era and approximately 5040 mm ( 6.25h5h) for the
PCO camera.
Measurements for the BFS flow were taken at the xy
planes shown in Fig. 3, by traversing the light sheet and
camera across the desired regions. Direct acquisition to
hard disk allowed 1,024 image pairs to be acquired in re-
gions I and II, and 128 image pairs in the boundary layer
(bl) region. The time between the image pair acquisitions
was set at approximately 2 s to ascertain that the instan-
taneous velocity fields would be statistically independent.
This value was based on a crude estimate of the integral
time scale of the turbulent boundary layer. Using a large
eddy size d and freestream velocity U, an approximate
eddy time scale can be calculated;seddy=d/U
0.7 s and
seddy
0.1 s for the low and high Reynolds number cases,
respectively. The image pair acquisition rate was also
limited by the hard disk acquisition speed and practical
limitations on the duration of acquisition (17 min for
1,024 frames acquired at 1 Hz). Excessively long acquisi-
tion times allowed particle sedimentation to develop on
the plate surfaces and particle drop-out to occur (particles
collecting on the screens, honeycomb and settling out in
the settling chamber due to the low fluid velocities there
and their slight negative buoyancy). This degraded image
quality is a result of image flaring at watersurface inter-
faces. The drop-out problem meant that fewer particles
were present in the flow by the end of the acquisition
period compared to the beginning, and was more evident
Fig. 3. PIV measurement regions for the backward-facing step
(BFS) flow. The measurement region used for characterising the correlation algorithm introduced by Soria (1994, 1996a,
upstream boundary layer is also shown. Low Reynolds number
BFS flow (Reh=580):xbl=2.5h, ybl=4h, xBFSI xBFSII 5h;
yBFS=2.5h. High Reynolds number BFS flow (Reh=4,680):xbl=4.6h, mental uncertainty of the MCCDPIV algorithm with
ybl=6.25h, xBFSI xBFSII 6:25h; yBFS=2.5h
for the low-speed flow where the fluid momentum (and,
hence, the particle momentum) was substantially less.
The boundary layer properties in Table 1 were obtained
from the average of 128 instantaneous velocity profiles
using cross-correlation digital PIV. Figure 4 shows the
mean turbulent boundary layer velocity profile plotted in
wall coordinates for both the high- and low-speed cases. A
universal turbulent boundary layer profile is also included
in each case for comparison. Further details of the up-
stream boundary layer properties, such as vortical struc-
ture scales, turbulence intensity profiles and Reynolds
stress profiles may be found in a PhD thesis by Kostas
(2002).
The wall shear velocity, us, was obtained using the
method of Clauser (1956). By plotting the mean velocity
profile on co-ordinates U/U versus ln(U=y/m) and least
squares fitting Eq. 18 to the portion of data exhibiting a
clear semi-logarithmic relationship, us/U may be ob-
tained directly. The universal constants j=0.41 and A=5.0
have been used here:
   
U us U1 y us us us
ln ln A 18
U1 jU1 m jU1 U1 U1
The spatial resolution of the imaging system in the high
Reynolds number case was insufficient to obtain any data
in the buffer (5<y+<20) or linear regions (y+<5). A de-
viation of the experimental data from the universal profile
for small y+ values in both the high and low Reynolds
number cases is most likely due to a bias introduced by a
lack of spatial resolution (i.e. measurement volume too
large) from the PIV data close to the wall. The spatial
averaging that occurs as a result of the finite interrogation
window size is particularly severe in locations with large
gradients (i.e. close to the wall) and, in this case, results in
an overestimation of the particle displacements. Further-
more, correlations of the wall surface with itself within the
interrogation region results in incorrectly determined
particle displacements.
The mean flow for both the low and high Reynolds
number BFS flows is shown in Fig. 5. The domain for the
high Reynolds number case is larger owing to the
increased field of view of the PCO camera due to its larger
CCD array. Both velocity fields are an amalgamation of the
mean velocity fields from regions I and II. The mean
reattachment length,XR for both cases differs, with the
high Reynolds number case having the smaller value of the
two. Although not apparent from the presented velocity
field, the high Reynolds number case also contains a sec-
ondary recirculation bubble at the step corner. The low
Reynolds number case has no such secondary recircula-
tion region. The spatial resolution for each statistically
independent velocity measurement is 1.3 mm ( 0.16h) in
both cases.
These single-exposed image pairs were analysed using
the MCCDPIV algorithm described by Soria et al. (1999),
which has its origin in an iterative and adaptive cross-
1996b). Details of the performance, precision and experi-
applications to the analysis of single-exposed PIV and

holographic PIV (HPIV) images have been reported in
Soria (1998) and von Ellenrieder et al. (2001), respectively.
The technique begins with large sampling window sizes
(SWS) and systematically moves to smaller windows by
using the displacement estimates from the preceding,
larger window size to offset the small windows. In addition
Fig. 5a, b. Mean 2-D velocity fields and streamlines for the BFS
flow in the xy plane. a Reh=580. b Reh=4,660. The velocity
measurements have been normalised by the freestream veloc-
ity,U (only every fourth vector is shown for clarity)
153
Fig. 4a, b. Boundary layer
velocity profile 2.25h upstream
from the step edge for: a the
low Reynolds number
(Reg=373) and b the high Rey-
nolds number (Reg=2,384)
boundary layer flows. The open
circle symbols represent exper-
imental data. Also plotted for
comparison is the universal
boundary layer pro-
file;U+=y+:y+<5;U +=5.0ln
y+)2.9; 5<y+<20 and
U 0:41
1
ln y 5:0 : y > 20
to this, linear particle image distortion (Huang et al 1993)
was used in regions of the flow where there was high shear.
The use of these techniques permits a large dynamic range
of velocities to be resolved in the flow whilst preserving
spatial resolution by minimising the sampling window
size. The results presented in this paper used a 3232-pixel
SWS as the smallest window size. Vorticity information
was calculated using the technique outlined by Fouras and
Soria (1998) by performing a local, 13-point, 2-Dv2 fit to
the velocity field around the point of interest and then
calculating spatial gradients from this functional fit.
Two errors arise in the calculated vorticity as a result of
this calculation method. A random error, rxz ; exists due to
the error in the velocity field calculation (i.e. the PIV er-
ror) and can be considered to have Gaussian-like prop-
erties. The other is a bias error,xb, which is generally an
underestimation of the peak vorticity, rxmax : Both these
errors depend on the spatial sampling separation of the
data, D, and on the size of a relevant length scale to be
resolved, L, although in an opposing fashion. The com-
plete details of the errors and their determination may be
found in Fouras and Soria (1998) and Kostas (2002). The
vorticity errors for each flow case are summarised in
Table 2. In all cases, independent measurements have been
assumed (i.e. PIV sampling region overlap is disregarded)
and the relevant length scale is indicated by L.
The entire data set consisted of two-component,
instantaneous velocity fields, (u,v), and single-component,
 Table 2. Vorticity errors arising from the calculation method.
decomposition data. The technique used to calculate the
The random and bias errors are represented by rxz and xxz b ;vorticity is identical to that mentioned in Sect. 3.3.
respectively.
u is the velocity error based on the reference max
The enstrophy spectra for both the velocity and vor-
velocity, Uref ( U and Uo for the BFS flow). L represents a
ticity decompositions for the two flow cases are shown in
characteristic length scale in the flow: dxzsep  mean
 vorticity
q 
Figs. 6 and 7. In all cases, 50 modes were calculated. The
non-dimensional random error transmission ratio 15 D=L
1
spectra show the contribution to the total flow fluctuating
du D xb
enstrophy from each mode. A mode or structure con-
eu Uref % L L rxz keu % xz % tributing a substantial proportion of the total enstrophy to
max

Low Re BFS 0.3 dxzsep 0.32 0.4 6.8 the flow plays a more significant role in the flow dynamics
High Re BFS 1.4 dxzsep 0.64 1.0 27.3 compared to a mode containing less enstrophy. Cumula-
tive sum curves are also included in the plots to illustrate
154
the effectiveness of the decomposition at capturing the
enstrophy in the flow. An efficient decomposition will
instantaneous vorticity fields, xz. Snapshot POD was ap- capture nearly 100% of the fluctuating enstrophy in a
plied to both the velocity and vorticity data for each flow. relatively small number of modes.
The presence of two inhomogeneous directions in the BFS A common trend appearing in the spectra is a more
flow (streamwise, x, and cross stream, y) meant that even distribution of the enstrophy across the modes as the
techniques such as shot-noise decomposition were not flow becomes increasingly more complex. This results in a
required. The phase information of the expansion coeffi- smaller cumulative fluctuating enstrophy sum for a given
cients was obtained directly from the flow field recon-
struction by projecting the original PIV data onto the
calculated modes using Eq. 16.

3.4
POD accuracy and convergence
The number of POD modes accurately resolved in the
analysis were, to a large degree, determined by the number
of data frames available. Also, the presence of random
noise and occasional poor data quality was found to be
reflected in the high-order modes, and essentially repre-
sented background noise. The results of Breuer and Siro-
vich (1991) indicate that for noise levels of the order of
10)2 on a sample size of M=400, the computed eigenvalues
remain accurate for mode numbers at least up to 50, while
the eigenfunctions begin to deviate from the true solution
for mode numbers less than this. Thus, considering that
random noise levels in the velocity and vorticity fields
from this investigation were of the order of 1% and the
sample size was M=1,024, the eigenvalues and eigenfunc-
tions are considered to be accurate up to approximately 50
modes.
Details on the effects of ensemble size, data resolution
and the presence of random noise in the data on the
empirical functions and eigenvalue spectrum calculated
using the POD procedure may be found in the paper by
Breuer and Sirovich (1991).

4
Results and discussion

4.1
POD enstrophy spectra
The term energy relates to different quantities in the
flow when dealing with velocity and vorticity, hence, a
direct comparison between the POD results using velocity
and vorticity cannot be made. A comparison on equal
grounds, though, may be made by taking the curl of the Fig. 6a, b. Mode shape enstrophy distribution for the low
velocity modes to obtain corresponding vorticity modes. Reynolds number BFS flow, Reh=580. a Region I. b Region II. The
solid line is vorticity-based decomposition, the dashed line is
The enstrophy associated with each velocity mode may velocity-based decomposition. The left ordinate axis represents
then be calculated from its corresponding vorticity mode the fluctuating enstrophy of individual modes, the right ordinate
and, now, may be directly compared to the vorticity axis represents the cumulative fluctuating enstrophy sum
 Table 3. Enstrophy fractions for the first 25 and 50 modes of the
low Reynolds number (Reh=580) BFS flow for both the velocity
and vorticity decompositions. a Region I. b Region II. eu
represents the cumulative time average fluctuating enstrophy
Modes Velocity Vorticity
hEi hEi hEi hEi
hEfluc i
% hEtot i
% hEfluc i
% hEtot i
%

a 25 68.92 92.61 77.92 94.75

50 79.00 95.01 84.30 96.27
b 25 53.37 75.65 66.58 82.55
50 67.56 83.06 77.18 88.08
155

Table 4. Enstrophy fractions for the first 25 and 50 modes

of the high Reynolds number (Reh=4,680) BFS flow for both
the velocity and vorticity decompositions. a Region I. b Region II.
hEi represents the cumulative time average fluctuating enstrophy
Modes Velocity Vorticity
hEi hEi hEi hEi
hEfluc i
% hEtot i
% hEfluc i
% hEtot i
%

a 25 15.02 52.20 22.37 56.33

50 24.98 57.80 34.79 63.32
b 25 11.08 24.25 16.90 29.21
50 19.04 31.04 27.09 37.89

features (i.e. low-order velocity modes) do not necessarily

have to posses a high enstrophy content. This is evident in
the steppy nature of the individual mode enstrophy
fraction curves.
It is interesting to see that the enstrophy spectra based
on the POD analysis of vorticity and velocity follow a
similar trend in the low Reynolds number flow, but are
Fig. 7 a, b. Mode shape enstrophy distribution for the high significantly different in the high Reynolds number flow.
Reynolds number BFS flow, Reh=4,680. a Region I. b Region II. While POD of vorticity and velocity may both identify
The solid line is vorticity-based decomposition, the dashed line is
velocity-based decomposition. The left ordinate axis represents vortical structures equivalently at low Reynolds numbers,
the fluctuating enstrophy of individual modes. The right ordinate the situation appears different at the higher Reynolds
axis represents the cumulative fluctuating enstrophy sum numbers. As the Reynolds number increases, POD of
vorticity appears to capture vorticity structures more
effectively than an equivalent decomposition of velocity.
number of modes. The cumulative sum of the mode ens- Further studies on high Reynolds number flow cases are
trophy as a fraction of the total enstrophy for each flow for required to investigate this phenomenon.
25 and 50 modes is listed in Tables 3 and 4, respectively. A
decrease in enstrophy content is noticeable between the 4.2
spectra of regions I and II. The increased level of flow Mean flow and POD modes
complexity near the reattachment region may result in a The fraction of energy the average flow contributes to the
less efficient decomposition and would more evenly dis- time averaged total flow energy (hEtot i) is also indicative of
tribute the enstrophy across the modes. The differences in the complexity of the flow. A higher Reynolds number
the fluctuating enstrophy sums are more evident in the (and, generally, a more turbulent flow) will have an
comparison between the low and high Reynolds number appreciable proportion of the energy lying in the fluctu-
cases. This feature has also been demonstrated in the re- ating component compared to a lower Reynolds number
sults of Rempfer and Fasel (1994b) on a transitional, flow (and, hence, a less turbulent flow) where the ratio of
spatially evolving boundary layer. the mean flow energy to total will be greater. The values for
Irregularities in the mode enstrophy distribution curves both the velocity and vorticity of each flow case are listed
for the velocity-based decomposition arise because the in Table 5.
enstrophy associated with the velocity modes is ordered In the low Reynolds number BFS flow, the mean flow
according to kinetic energy content. The corresponding contributes 96% to the time averaged total flow kinetic
enstrophy associated with each velocity mode will not energy in region I and 94% in region II. The high Reynolds
necessarily be ordered in the same way as the kinetic number flow shows that equal fractions of kinetic energy,
energy. This implies that high kinetic energy containing 97%, are contributed to the flow by the mean flow in both
 Table 5. Contribution to the time averaged total flow kinetic here). The velocity results seem to contradict the vorticity
energy and time averaged total flow enstrophy from the mean results by having almost equal proportions of kinetic en-
velocity and mean vorticity fields, respectively
ergy associated to the mean flow in both regions.
Kinetic energy Enstrophy The POD modes represent the most common events
hKEmean i hEmean i occurring in the fluctuating velocity/vorticity fields. A
hKEtotal i % hEtotal i %
conceptual aid used in interpreting their physical meaning
BFS low I 96.47 76.23 is to consider them being superimposed upon a base flow
BFS low II 93.59 47.79 (the mean flow here). Modes 1 and 4 of the velocity and
BFS high I 96.83 43.75 vorticity decompositions for both flow cases are shown in
BFS high II 97.11 14.81
Figs. 8, 9, 10 and 11. Having taken the curl of the velocity
modes not only puts them in a convenient reference frame
156
regions. The vorticity decomposition shows a more drastic for flow structure identification, but it also allows a direct
change in mean enstrophy contribution, 76% versus 48% comparison to be made between the velocity and vorticity
for the low Reynolds number flow and 44% versus 15% for modes.
the high Reynolds number flow. These very low values of The vorticity modes tend to highlight vorticity struc-
enstrophy residing in the mean vorticity suggest that re- tures more than the equivalent velocity modes. This is
gion II may contain disorganised vortical motions that particularly evident in the high Reynolds number flows
bear little resemblance to the mean flow (i.e. it is normally where a greater range of scales exists. In the low Reynolds
expected that a base or mean flow exists with fluctuations number BFS flow, where a limited range of scales is
superimposed on it, which does not appear to be the case present, the velocity decomposition does much better at

Fig. 8ad. POD modes in region

I of the low Reynolds number
BFS flow (Reh=580). a Vorticity
mode 1. b Curl of velocity
mode 1. c Vorticity mode 4.
d Curl of velocity mode 4. The
vorticity is normalised by plate
height and freestream velocity,
xz=xzh/U

Fig. 9ad. POD modes in region

II of the low Reynolds number
BFS flow (Reh=580). a Vorticity
mode 1. b Curl of velocity
mode 1. c Vorticity mode 4.
d Curl of velocity mode 4. The
vorticity is normalised by plate
height and freestream velocity,
xz=xzh/U
 Fig. 10ad. POD modes in re-
gion I of the high Reynolds
number BFS flow (Reh=4,660).
a Vorticity mode 1. b Curl of 157
velocity mode 1. c Vorticity
mode 4. d Curl of velocity
mode 4. The vorticity is
normalised by plate height
and freestream velocity,
xz=xzh/U

identifying vorticity structures than in the velocity
decomposition of the high Reynolds number flow. Far
more structure is apparent in the vorticity modes of the
high Reynolds number BFS flow than the corresponding
velocity modes.
In all flow cases, the spatial structure of vorticity mode
1 is similar to velocity mode 1. However, this is generally
not true for the remaining modes (the differences between
vorticity mode 4 and velocity mode 4 are representative of
the differences between the other modes) with no one-to-
one correspondence between the vorticity modes and the
velocity modes.
A maximum fluctuating enstrophy content of 20% is
obtained in region I for the low Reynolds number flow.
The modes in each region of the flow are characterised by
a large, horizontal band of positive vorticity lying adjacent
to a similarly sized negative, horizontal vorticity band.
These bands of vorticity within mode 1 are in close
proximity to the mean separation streamline in region I.
They are closer to the wall in region II. The sign of the
vorticity bands in mode 1 is different for each flow case. A
negative band of vorticity is closer to the wall in the
low Reynolds number case while a positive band exists
there in the high Reynolds number case. This has no
bearing on the flow feature that the mode represents since
the sign of the reconstruction coefficient effectively con-
trols the arrangement of the positive/negative vorticity
bands.
The curl of the velocity modes display similar fea-
tures to the vorticity modes (except for some differences
in the sign of the vorticity), but contain substantially
less defined bands of vorticity. In addition, the strength
of the fluctuating enstrophy associated with the curl of
the first velocity mode is approximately half that of the
vorticity mode.
The study by Huang (1994) observed similarly shaped
lowest-order modes, both in the velocity and vorticity
domain, to those found in region I of this investigation
(see also Kostas 2002). Using a one-term reconstruction of
the first mode, as shown in Eq. 19, they found that the
lowest-order mode was associated with a large-scale, back
and forth oscillatory motion of the reattachment points
and, hence, a variation in size of the separation bubble:

z x; y an1 wx1z x; y
xz x; y; tn 1term x 19
The similarity in the lowest-order modes suggests that a
common motion or flow feature is present in both flows
that contains a significant proportion of the fluctuating
enstrophy.

Fig. 11ad. POD modes in re-

gion II of the high Reynolds
number BFS flow (Reh=4,660).
a Vorticity mode 1. b Curl of
velocity mode 1. c Vorticity
mode 4. d Curl of velocity
mode 4. The vorticity is
normalised by plate height
and freestream velocity,
xz=xzh/U
 4.3
Flow reconstruction accuracy
To investigate whether the 2-D velocity or 1-D vorticity
was the more efficient in the flow decomposition, com-
parisons between the reconstructed vorticity flow fields
and the actual vorticity data were made as a function of the
number of modes used in the reconstruction. In the case of
the velocity decomposition, the curl of the velocity ei-
genfunctions was used as the basis to reconstruct the
vorticity field. Alternatively, taking the curl of the recon-
158 structed velocity field yielded identical results due to the
linear nature of the reconstruction process and the dis-
tributive properties of the curl operator, i.e.:
 
1 2
r  at w1 at w2   
1 2
 at r  w1 at r  w2    20
As a quantitative measure of the accuracy of the POD
reconstruction, the root mean square error over all frames
was calculated between the reconstructed flow field and the
actual data, i.e.:
M ZZ 12
1X 2
exz rec xz x; y; tn  xzrec x; y; tn  dxdy
M n1 D

21
The root mean square reconstruction error,
(xz)rec, was
normalised by the maximum absolute value of the vorticity
in the flow, jxzmax j: The results for each flow case are
shown in Figs. 12 and 13.
An interesting feature in the reconstruction error plots
is the initial decrease then increase of the error in region I
of the low Reynolds number BFS flow shown in Fig. 12a.
Here, the vorticity-based reconstruction error rises mar-
ginally above the velocity-based reconstruction error after
approximately 20 modes until about 40 modes, after which
it decreases once again.
This slight rise then decline of error in the vorticity
reconstruction of Fig. 12a may be due to poor conver-
gence in only some certain modes. Furthermore, since
the error does not continue to rise by increasing the
number of modes in the reconstruction, it is unlikely
that the entire mode spectrum is affected. However, this
can only be valid for the 50 modes that have been
computed and the behaviour of the reconstruction error
may alter when more modes are calculated in the
decomposition.
The flow reconstruction results indicate that, for all
cases considered here, the vorticity-based flow decom-
position produces a reconstructed flow field equivalent
to or better than a flow field reconstructed from a
velocity-based decomposition using the same number of
modes. The relatively small range of scales and relatively
organised flow activity in region I of the low Reynolds
number flow may be the reason why the reconstruction
using either basis performs equally well with approxi-
mately 50 modes in the reconstruction. The energy
spectra in Fig. 6a demonstrate that a relatively efficient
decomposition results when this type of flow is
decomposed.
Fig. 12 a, b. Reconstruction accuracy for the low Reynolds number
BFS flow. a Region I. b Region II. The open circles is the vorticity-
based reconstruction, the open squares is the velocity-based
reconstruction. The root mean square reconstruction
error,
(xz)rec, is normalised by the maximum absolute value of
the vorticity in the flow, jxzmax j
5
Conclusions
This paper has investigated the merits of using velocity-
and vorticity-based POD analysis of planar particle image
velocimetry (PIV) data to aid in the identification of vor-
tical structures in a backward-facing step (BFS) flow. The
results suggest that the unambiguous and objective iden-
tification and description of the dominant vortical struc-
tures in a flow is more effective using a POD analysis of the
out-of-plane vorticity field than a POD analysis of the 2-D
velocity field.
Furthermore, the low-order POD modes for the BFS
at the two Reynolds numbers studied (580 and 4,660)
bear a common structure, suggesting a large-scale sim-
ilarity independent of Reynolds number. The structure
of the higher-order modes and, hence, smaller
scales were found to depend strongly on the Reynolds
number.

Fig. 13a, b. Reconstruction accuracy for the high Reynolds
number BFS flow. a Region I. b Region II. The open circles is the
vorticity-based reconstruction, the open squares is the velocity-
based reconstruction. The root mean square reconstruction error,

(xz)rec, is normalised by the maximum absolute value of the
vorticity in the flow, jxzmax j
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