SBIR Phase I: Educational Particle Image Velocimetry Suites

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目旨在开发一种低成本的教育粒子图像测速(PIV)套件，包括用于高中、本科和研究生水平的流体科学和工程教育的硬件和软件。PIV技术是一种流体流动研究，能够对流场进行直观和定量的分析。工业级/研究级PIV系统的成本通常超过10万美元。目前的PIV系统都是高功率系统，其高昂的成本和安全考虑使其不适合在高等教育系统中采用。这一开发将通过开发软件作为教育过程的虚拟教学助手来创建学习材料，学生可以通过教室中的计算机终端进行互动实验，从而加深对流体流动的理解。因此，该软件将成为一种可用于不同教育环境的工具，因为它是一种有效的教育工具，具有高科技吸引力、体积小、成本低和安全。更广泛的影响包括开发更有效地利用多核处理器体系结构的计算能力的应用程序，以及提高软件开发人员的生产力。该项目的成功技术执行和后续的商业开发将对广泛的应用领域产生影响。教育和专业发展也将得到积极的援助。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project is to develop a low cost educational particle image velocimetry (PIV) suite including both hardware and software for fluid science and engineering education at high-school, undergraduate and graduate school levels. PIV technology is fluid flow research that enables visual and quantitative analysis of the flow field. Industrial/research level PIV system usually costs over $100,000. Current PIV systems are high power systems, and their high cost and safety considerations make them not suitable for adoption in the higher education system. This development will create learning materials by developing software as a virtual teaching assistant for the education process, where the students can develop enhanced understanding of fluid flow by interactive experiments through a computer terminal in the classroom. Hence, the software will be an instrument that can be used in diverse educational settings because of its effectiveness as an education tool, high-tech appeal, compact size, low cost and safety.The broader impacts include the development of applications which more effectively utilize the computational power of multi-core processor architectures and enhanced productivity of software developers. The successful technical execution of this project and the follow up commercial development of this project would impact a broad range of application domains. Education and professional development would also be positively assisted.