Recommendations on dynamic pressure sensor placement for transonic wind tunnel tests

Abstract

A wind tunnel test was conducted that measured surface fluctuating pressures aft of a ramp at transonic speeds. Dynamic pressure test data was used to perform a study to determine best locations for streamwise sensor pairs for shocked and unshocked runs based on minimizing the error in root-mean-square acceleration response of the panel. For unshocked conditions, the upstream sensor is best placed at least 6.5 ramp heights downstream of the ramp, and the downstream sensor should be within 2 ramp heights from the upstream sensor. For shocked conditions, the upstream sensor should be between 1 and 7 ramp heights downstream of the shock, with the downstream sensor 2 to 3 ramp heights of the upstream sensor. The shock was found to prevent the passage coherent flow structures; therefore, it may be desired to use the shock to define the boundary of subzones for the purpose of loads definition. These recommendations should be generally applicable to a range of expansion corner geometries in transonic flow provided similar flow structures exist. The recommendations for shocked runs is more limited, relying on data from a single dataset with the shock located near the forward end of the region of interest.