A Technique for the Measurement of Wall Shear Stress Based on Micro Fabricated Hot-Film Sensor

Abstract

The objective of this study is to establish a technique for accurately measuring the wall shear stress in turbulent flows using a micro-fabricated hot-film sensor. Previously, we developed a hot-film sensor with a flexible polyimide-film substrate. This sensor can be attached to curved walls and be used in various situations. Furthermore, the sensor has a 20-μm-wide, heated thin metal film. However, the temporal resolution of this hot-film sensor is not very high owing to its substrate’s high heat capacity. Consequently, its performance is inadequate for measuring the wall shear stress “fluctuations” in turbulent flows. Therefore, we have developed another type of hot-film sensor in which the substrate is replaced with silicon, and a cavity has been introduced under the hot-film for reducing heat loss from the sensor and achieving high temporal resolution. Furthermore, for improving the sensor’s spatial resolution, the width of the hot-film is decreased to 10 μm. The structure of the hot-film’s pattern and the flow-detection mechanism are similar to those of the previous sensor. Experimental results show that new hot-film sensor works as expected and has better temporal resolution than the previous hot-film sensor. As future work, we will measure the wall shear stress for a turbulent wall-jet and discuss the relationship between a large-scale coherent vortex structure and wall shear stress based on data obtained using the new hot-film sensor.