Measurement of wind speed from cooling lake thermal imagery

Alfred J. Garrett; R. Cary Tuckfield; Eliel Villa-Aleman; Robert J. Kurzeja; Malcolm M. Pendergast

doi:10.1117/12.817755

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22 April 2009 Measurement of wind speed from cooling lake thermal imagery

Alfred J. Garrett, R. Cary Tuckfield, Eliel Villa-Aleman, Robert J. Kurzeja, Malcolm M. Pendergast

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Proceedings Volume 7299, Thermosense XXXI; 72990A (2009) https://doi.org/10.1117/12.817755
Event: SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing, 2009, Orlando, Florida, United States

Abstract

The Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL) collected thermal imagery and ground truth data at two commercial power plant cooling lakes to investigate the applicability of laboratory empirical correlations between surface heat flux and wind speed, and statistics derived from thermal imagery. SRNL demonstrated in a previous paper [1] that a linear relationship exists between the standard deviation of image temperature and surface heat flux. In this paper, SRNL will show that the skewness of the temperature distribution derived from cooling lake thermal images correlates with instantaneous wind speed measured at the same location. SRNL collected thermal imagery, surface meteorology and water temperatures from helicopters and boats at the Comanche Peak and H. B. Robinson nuclear power plant cooling lakes. SRNL found that decreasing skewness correlated with increasing wind speed, as was the case for the laboratory experiments. Simple linear and orthogonal regression models both explained about 50% of the variance in the skewness - wind speed plots. A nonlinear (logistic) regression model produced a better fit to the data, apparently because the thermal convection and resulting skewness are related to wind speed in a highly nonlinear way in nearly calm and in windy conditions.

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Alfred J. Garrett, R. Cary Tuckfield, Eliel Villa-Aleman, Robert J. Kurzeja, and Malcolm M. Pendergast "Measurement of wind speed from cooling lake thermal imagery", Proc. SPIE 7299, Thermosense XXXI, 72990A (22 April 2009); https://doi.org/10.1117/12.817755

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