Towards accurate stereo-video based free-surface reconstruction for wave tank experiments

Measuring accurately the shape of the free surface in medium-scale hydrodynamic testing facilities is challenging with conventional wave gauges. To overcome this problem, it is necessary to go towards higher resolution measurement systems. For this purpose, we investigate the ability of stereo-video acquisition systems to reconstruct free surface waves in laboratory conditions. This technique has been proven to give satisfactory results in open sea conditions, although it is dependent on the environmental conditions (weather, solar incidence angle). At sea, the stereo-video reconstruction algorithm makes profit of the short waves generated by the wind in order to correlate the points from the left and right images. The main challenge of adapting this technique to laboratory conditions, i.e. in absence of sun and wind, is to overcome the absence of texture on the free surface. This paper presents recent work aiming at developing a stereo-vision measurement system for laboratory conditions. Our efforts have been devoted to finding an adapted lighting system and generating a texture suitable for the reconstruction algorithm. Different lighting configurations have been tested in order to understand its impact on the reconstructions. For the texture generation, we have investigated different means of generating short surface waves (water droplets, air blowing, circulation current, underwater acoustic emissions) in different experimental facilities. Our conclusions show that it is possible to reconstruct the shape of surface gravity waves in the presence of short surface waves and that the effects of lighting and texture on the quality of the reconstruction are strongly coupled.