Abstract
Variations of temperature field in a Hele-Shaw convection cell (HSC) were measured using a holographic interferometry with varying Rayleigh number. Experimental results show a steady flow pattern at low Rayleigh numbers and a time-dependent periodic flow at high Rayleigh numbers. Especially, the period of oscillation at Ra = 6.35 $\times$ 10$^{6}$ was 62 seconds. Two different measurement methods of holographic interferometry, double-exposure method and real-time method, were employed to measure the temperature field variations of HSC convective flow. In the double-exposure method, unwanted waves can be eliminated and reconstruction images are clear, but transient flow structure cannot be observed clearly. On the other hand, transient flow can be observed and reconstructed well using the real-time method. However, the fringe patterns reconstructed by the real-time method contain more noise, compared with the double-exposure method. The two holographic interferometer techniques employed complementary in this study were proved to be useful fur analyzing the temperature field variations of unsteady thermal fluid flows.