A miniature triple hot-wire probe for wall bounded flows

Abstract

 Four orthogonal and one non-orthogonal miniature triple hot-wire probes have been developed and tested in a two-dimensional turbulent boundary layer. The influence of the different wire configurations on measurements of the Reynolds stresses has been studied. A directional calibration with an analytical solution for the wire response equations was used for the measurements of the non-orthogonal probe and was tested for the orthogonal probes in order to correct their possible geometrical imperfections. It is shown that a directional calibration does not significantly improve the quality of the measurements for precisely manufactured orthogonal probes and that measuring errors are related rather to the measuring volume, the size of the domain of unique solutions for the instantaneous velocity vector and interference effects, i.e. the wire configuration itself.