A two-dimensional temperature correction method for pressure-sensitive paint measurement on helicopter rotor blades

High effective WENO scheme for transonic inviscid flow computation on a helicopter rotor in hover

Discussion on measurement mechanism of pressure-sensitive paints

While pressure sensitive paint (PSP) technique has been widely used to measure adiabatic film cooling effectiveness distributions on the surfaces of interest based on a mass transfer analog to traditional thermal-based measurements, very little can be found in literature to provide a comprehensive analysis on the uncertainty levels of the measured film cooling effectiveness distributions derived from PSP measurements. In the present study, a detailed analysis is performed to evaluate the effects of various associated uncertainties in the PSP measurements on the measured film cooling effectiveness distributions over the surfaces of interest. The experimental study is conducted in a low-speed wind tunnel under an isothermal condition. While airflow is used to represent the “hot” mainstream flow, an oxygen-free gas, i.e., carbon dioxide (CO2) gas with a density ratio of DR = 1.5 for the present study, is supplied to simulate the “coolant” stream for the PSP measurements to map the adiabatic film cooling effectiveness distribution over a flat test plate with an array of five cylindrical coolant holes at a span-wise spacing of three diameters center-to-center. A comprehensive analysis was carried out with focus on the measurement uncertainty and process uncertainty for the PSP measurements to determine the film cooling effectiveness distributions over the surface of interest. The final analysis indicates that the total uncertainty in the adiabatic film cooling effectiveness measurements by using the PSP technique depends strongly on the local behavior of the mixing process between the mainstream and coolant flows. The measurement uncertainty is estimated as high as 5% at the near field behind the coolant holes. In the far field away from the coolant holes, the total measurement uncertainty is found to be more uniform throughout the measurement domain and generally lower than those in the near field at about 3%.

Differential luminescent imaging method for pressure field measurement

The videogrammetric model deformation (VMD) measurement technique is developed, which is integrated with fast-responding pressure sensitive paint (PSP) to measure simultaneously unsteady aeroelastic deformation and pressure field of a wing in transonic and supersonic wind tunnels. The measurement system and data processing are described. The method of generating a deformed wing surface based on VMD measurements for PSP data mapping on the surface is developed and evaluated through simulation. Simultaneous VMD and PSP measurements on an oscillating airfoil section have been conducted in a transonic wind tunnel, and VMD data are obtained from the registration targets in PSP images. Furthermore, dynamic aeroelastic deformation of a thin flexible rectangular wing is measured by using a single-camera VMD system in a low-speed wind tunnel, and the vibration modes are extracted at different angles of attack and freestream velocities.

Image measurement using pressure-sensitive paint (PSP) is an effective tool for analyzing the unsteady pressure field on the surface of a body in a low-speed air flow, which is associated with wind noise. In this study, the surface pressure fluctuation due to the tonal trailing edge (TE) noise for a two-dimensional NACA 0012 airfoil was quantitatively detected using a porous anodized aluminum PSP (AA-PSP). The emission from the PSP upon illumination by a blue laser diode was captured using a 12-bit high-speed complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) camera. The intensities of the captured images were converted to pressures using a standard intensity-based method. Three image-processing methods based on the fast Fourier transform (FFT) were tested to determine their efficiency in improving the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the unsteady PSP data. In addition to two fundamental FFT techniques (the full data and ensemble averaging FFTs), a technique using the coherent output power (COP), which involves the cross correlation between the PSP data and the signal measured using a pointwise sound-level meter, was tested. Preliminary tests indicated that random photon shot noise dominates the intensity fluctuations in the captured PSP emissions above 200 Hz. Pressure fluctuations associated with the TE noise, whose dominant frequency is approximately 940 Hz, were successfully measured by analyzing 40,960 sequential PSP images recorded at 10 kfps. Quantitative validation using the power spectrum indicates that the COP technique is the most effective method of identification of the pressure fluctuation directly related to TE noise. It is possible to distinguish power differences with a resolution of 10 Pa $$^2$$ (4 Pa in amplitude) when the COP was employed without use of another wind-off data. This resolution cannot be achieved by the ensemble averaging FFT because of an insufficient elimination of the background noise.

Pressure-Sensitive Paint (PSP) technique has been applied to measure pressure distribution on airfoil models at low Reynolds number (Re = 4.1x10 4.3x10) in the Mars Wind Tunnel (MWT) at Tohoku University. In this study, the capability of PSP for pressure measurement was evaluated with a particular emphasis on its applications to thin airfoil models. The obtained results show that PSP can clearly visualize pressure distributions on the airfoils, allowing us to analyze a behavior of the separated shear layer on the airfoil including laminar-to-turbulent transition and reattachment. A comparison between the PSP and balance measurements indicates that the evolution of a laminar separation bubble over the airfoil surface has a strong effect on the lift and drag characteristics. It has been also verified by this experiment that, using the proposed method for temperature correction, pressure distribution can be obtained quantitatively even on thin airfoils.

A procedure for the computation of transonic steady and unsteady flow around helicopter rotors is presented. The algorithm is based on the Euler equations and allows the computation of anisotropic rotational flow and thus an implicitly accurate calculation of shocks. In addition the capturing of the rotor wake and the tip vortex is provided for arbitrary tip shapes. The code for the computation of steady, fully 3-D rotor flow is derived from the EUFLEX procedure originated by A. Eberle, that has successfully been applied to a lot of fixed wing configurations up to now. A finite-volume scheme based on the method of characteristic flux averaging solves the Euler equations formulated in the conservation form. The discretizatlon of the flow field is carried out in two different manners concerning the grid topology and the size of the physical domain. Calculations are presented for a non-lifting case and for a helicopter rotor in hover. The comparisons of the method in its present stage show good agreement with experimental data.

This paper presents the application of pressure-sensitive paint (PSP) measurement technology to a large-scale commercial turbine-engine test stand. In this work, the test article is the engine-inlet bell mouth. A sol-gel-based PSP is applied to the inlet and illuminated using the blue (460-nm) output of eleven LED arrays. PSP data are acquired using a scientific-grade CCD camera. The application of PSP measurements in the engine-test-stand environment requires test instrumentation to be fixed within a housing located upstream of the test article. Challenges associated with performing PSP in this hostile environment are discussed, with focus on the strategies implemented to recover surface-pressure distributions on the engine-inlet bell mouth.

The objective of this study is to examine the effect of the geometrical modification of the land on the overall film cooling effectiveness on the cutback region of a turbine blade model. A room-temperature experiment was conducted, in which nitrogen serves as the cooling stream, and the mainstream flow is air. The adiabatic film cooling effectiveness was mapped employing the pressure-sensitive paint (PSP) technique. Data was acquired at five different blowing ratios (from 0.45 to 1.65) for both the baseline and the modified model. Detailed film cooling effectiveness from PSP measurements in correlation with the flow map in streamwise and spanwise planes from particle image velocimetry (PIV) measurements was performed, characterizing the effect of rounding the edges of the lands. The results show that the rounded edges enable the coolant flow to reach the top surface of the land area more readily, especially at low blowing ratios. Superior coolant coverage on the land surface observed in the PSP measurements are well correlated with the PIV measurements. At the high blowing ratio of 1.65, the round edge of the lands helps regulate the mixing between the coolant and mainstream flows, therefore the film cooling effectiveness in the slot region is also improved.

Unsteady Pressure-Sensitive Paint (PSP) measurement of a rocket faring model was conducted at the JAXA 2m×2m Transonic Wind Tunnel as a part of the campaign to investigate the steady and unsteady flow field and to obtain the CFD validation data. Unsteady PSP measurement results of M=0.8 and =0 and +4° were described in this paper. Anodized-aluminum PSP (AA-PSP) was coated on the model surface, and it was illuminated by a high-power blue laser diode. AA-PSP luminescence was measured by a high-speed camera, whose frame rate was 5k frame-per-sec. The high-speed camera images were reduced to the time-series Cp distribution images using in-situ method involving pressure transducer data. Several kinds of data analysis were applied to the time-series Cp images and discussed about steady pressure distribution, unsteady pressure variation, and the results of the spectral analysis of the flow field around a rocket faring configuration.

In the present article, the authors are performing a comparison study between two vortex models for the rapid numerical computation of the static thrust of a helicopter rotor in hover. The aim of this study is to access the rapidity and accuracy of a vortex model, comprised of a series of vortex rings and a single semi-infinite vortex cylinder, compared to a helical wake model with straight-line segmentation. Studies are performed for the optimal number of vortex elements, as well as for their optimal positioning, in order to provide both fast computation and good agreement with the experimental data obtained from a wind tunnel test of a model rotor. The studied vortex model is shown to significantly reduce the amount of computational time required to evaluate the performance of the model rotor, when compared to the helical wake model, while offering a similar degree of accuracy.

Surface pressure measurements were taken on a hemisphere-on-cylinder turret in a wind tunnel using pressure sensitive paint and fast response pressure transducers. Four different turret protrusion distances were tested to study the characteristics of the unsteady pressure field on the backside and wake of the turret. Proper orthogonal decomposition was used to identify the dominant spatial surface pressure modes acting on the turret in this parametric study. It was found that the further the turret protruded into the freestream flow, the more the surface pressure field became dominated by spanwise antisymmetric surface pressure distributions resulting from anti-symmetrical vortex shedding at a normalized frequency of approximately StD=0.2. For the case of the partial hemisphere, this anti-symmetrical vortex shedding was essentially absent, insinuating that at some protrusion distance, the surface pressure environment on the turret fundamentally changes. The normalized net force rms was calculated on the turret for each configuration. It was found that the greater the turret protrusion, the greater the net force acting in the spanwise direction.

The fast response Pressure Sensitive Paint (PSP) was studied to develop the capability of making global pressure measurements in unsteady and short duration flow conditions. In this work, the response times of porous PSP were characterized from two dynamic calibration device. Visualization and measurements of aerodynamic effects on a Cylinder/flat plate configuration were conducted in a hypersonic wind tunnel of CAAA using the fast response PSP technique. Unsteady PSP measurement results of Ma=5 were described in this paper. PSP was sprayed on the flat plate surface and it was illuminated by a high power UV light. The luminescence was measured by a high-speed camera. After image processing, the time series absolute pressure distributions on the surface were obtained. Comparison between the PSP result and pressure transducers were also described.

The measurement of surface pressure in wind tunnel or in flight tests gives very important data for aerodynamics analysis. In fact, the pressure measurement gives valuable information about air flow phenomena such as shock, flow separation and boundary layer transition. In this paper a real-time image processing system for pressure sensitive paint (PSP) measurement and calibration has been designed using a calibrated pressure sensor. In the implementation of the system, TCL paper is used to luminaphore inside a windowed enclosure and a factory-calibrated pressure sensor for validation of measurement. The pressure measurement of PSP is based on the images acquired from a CCD camera sent to the MyRIO processor module in which the real-time image processing has been applied. The results are compared with the calibrated sensor from which the A and B coefficients of the Estern Volmer Equation have been calculated. During the several tests done for the pressure measurement, the accuracy of the PSP measurement has been calculated in this paper. Both normal and real-time image processing analysis have been compared as well.