Wind Tunnel and Laboratory Calibration of Balloon-Borne Wind Sensors.

Abstract

Two-low speed wind sensors have been calibrated for measuring the wind speed at an instrument suspended below stratospheric balloons. The low Reynolds number environment was duplicated at the NASA/Ames low-speed MARSWIT wind-tunnel facility, and in a laboratory bell jar. The two new instruments are the time-of-flight instrument that measures the motion of an ion cloud through an open pipe, and the corona anemometer that measures the displacement of an ion beam transversing the air-stream flowing between two plates. The calibrations consist of placing the instruments in a flow stream, and relating the instrument output to the flow-stream velocity. The laboratory calibration is easy to conduct, but is limited to a measurement of internal flow velocity. The wind-tunnel calibration is performed to relate laboratory calibration to freestream conditions. (Author)

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Jul 27, 1981
Accession Number
ADA108676

Entities

People

  • J. H. Brown
  • R. E. Good

Organizations

  • Air Force Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Materials and Manufacturing Processes
  • Sensors

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Air Force
  • Air Gaps
  • Anemometers
  • Boundary Layer
  • Calibration
  • Detectors
  • Diffusion
  • Environment
  • Flow
  • Ion Beams
  • Ions
  • Measurement
  • Physics Laboratories
  • Reynolds Number
  • Walls
  • Wind
  • Wind Tunnels

Fields of Study

  • Environmental science

Readers

  • Aerosol Science/Aerosol Physics
  • Fluid Dynamics.
  • Plasma Physics.

Technology Areas

  • Space
  • Space - Hall-Effect Thruster