This practical guide to PIV provides in a condensed form most of the information relevant for the planning, performance and understanding of experiments employing the PIV technique. In its second edition, the authors updated the chapters on the principles and included information on microscopic, high-speed and three component measurements as well as a description of advanced evaluation techniques. Steve Wereley with his knowledge completed the group of authors of the first edition and his participation as an author was the key for that update. But also the drastic increase in the range of possible applications has been taken into account as the chapter describing representative applications of the PIV technique has been expanded considerably.
The resulting book is mainly intended for engineers, scientists and students, who already have some basic knowledge of fluid mechanics and non-intrusive optical measurement techniques. For many researchers and engineers planning to utilize PIV for their special industrial or scientific applications, PIV is just an attractive tool with unique features which may help them to gain new insights in problems of fluid mechanics. These people are usually not interested in becoming specialists in this field before starting their investigations. On the other side some of the basic properties of PIV must be well understood before a correct interpretation of the results is possible.
