Applicability of time-average fluid holography for analysis of propagating waves

Numerical procedures for construction of digital patterns of fringes mimicking fluid holograms are developed. Because conventional finite-element fluid analysis techniques are based on the approximation of nodal displacements, conjugate smoothing of the values of volumetric strain is performed in order to obtain realistic holographic images. Two-dimensional fluid oscillations are analyzed using the developed techniques. It is shown that though time-average fluid holography is a powerful optical experimental method for analysis of short-term transient processes and harmonic vibrations, it has rather limited applicability to studying propagating waves. (c) 2005 society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers.