Advances in wind-blown sand flow optical measurement and image processing techniques

Based on the important role of optical measurement in wind-blown sand flow exper-iments, this paper reviews all kinds of optical measurement techniques from the birth of the dy-namics of blown sand. The advantages, disadvantages and application range of these methods were pointed out. Then, the applications and image processing methods of latest optical measure-ment techniques, PIV and high-speed digital measurement. were specially introduced. It is proved that the increasing resolution ability in spatial and temporal of optical measurement will offer plenteous support on sand micro-mechanics analysis and wind-blown sand flow macro data statistic.