Windowed Fourier transform as an essential digital interferometry tool to study coupled heat and mass transfer

• For the first time WFT method is used to analyze the ODI Soret experiment.
• Using WFT instead of FFT provides a better result for all parameters.
• The vital use of WFT to study the ODI images involving both heat and mass transfer.
• The WFT method is indispensable in studying thermodiffusion in ternary systems.

Series of thermodiffusion experiments using optical digital interferometry (ODI) have been conducted onboard the International Space Station. Conventionally, the two-dimensional (2D) fast Fourier transform (FFT) fringe analysis technique has been applied as a fast and reliable technique to extract data. In this study, for the first time, the windowed Fourier transform (WFT) method is used to analyze the same experiments. In this method, a Fourier transformation is applied on the fringes at two different stages: initially, during the filtration of the non-zero peaks and then on the wrapped phase image. We provide a detailed comparison between FFT and WFT results of binary and ternary mixtures for ODI thermodiffusion experiments. The substantial enhancements of this method are presented and discussed for different experiments conducted for both binary and ternary mixtures. We show that while disturbances in the phase fringe pattern can cause significant error in FFT techniques, if the windowed Fourier filtration (WFF) parameters are properly chosen this type of noise can be eliminated during WFF analysis. The importance of replacing the FFT method becomes more pronounced for the ternary system, as this method fails to reconcile reliable concentration profiles. The results of this work can show that the application of the windowed Fourier transform in optical digital interferometry investigations show improved results over the same experiments analyzed using FFT methods, especially for experiments involving very small heat and mass fluxes such as the Soret effect in multicomponent mixtures.