Hidden Grid Background Oriented Schlieren in Studying Convective Flows

In this paper, we present a new BOS (Background Oriented Schlieren), based on a hidden grid, for studying heat flows. In the setup, we record a grid-based intensity pattern whose phase map carries information about the temperature gradient. The background (undistorted) pattern is hidden in the light source. Quantitative analysis is obtained by a windowed Fourier transform approach. Some experimental results are given to demonstrate the feasibility of the technique.