Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Tech Transfer
Fast Responding Pressure-Sensitive Paint for Large-Scale Wind Tunnel Testing
Project Description
The proposed work focuses on implementing fast-response pressure-sensitive paint for measurements of unsteady pressure in rotorcraft applications. Significant rotorcraft problems such as dynamic stall, rotor blade loads in forward flight, and blade-vortex interaction all have significant unsteady pressure oscillations that must be resolved in order to understand the underlying physics. Installation of pressure transducers is difficult and expensive on rotorcraft models, and the resulting data has limited spatial resolution. Application of a fast-responding pressure-sensitive paint should provide unsteady surface pressure distributed over the blade surface. Fast PSP measurements have been demonstrated at NASA Langley on a 2-meter rotor model in hover and in forward flight by the ISSI/OSU team using two single camera systems. More recently, measurements were conducted in forward flight using multiple cameras and lasers at two azimuthal positions. We propose expanding this system for production testing. This will be accomplished by adding remote control of the system interrogation region using remote focus/zoom/aperture lenses and pan/tilt stages combined with Ethernet hardware to control the systems remotely. Motion blur will be addressed using both a rotating mirror and de-convolution software. Data processing software will be customized to allow scripting of repetitive operations to speed up data processing. Finally, a temperature measurement capability will be added to the system to allow temperature corrections to be applied to the PSP data. These modifications to the system will improve accuracy and productivity during testing.
More »
Anticipated Benefits
There is considerable interest in measurements of unsteady pressure for evaluation of computational models and study of flow physics on hypersonic inlets, compressors, aeroelasticity, and rotorcraft aerodynamics. This system will provide advancement of the state-of-the-art in this field as the proposed research will develop a system for the measurement of continuous distributions unsteady pressure that require no physical modifications to the model and produces data with high spatial resolution. This technology could be deployed to wind tunnels at Ames, Glenn, and Langley for testing on a variety of programs that have need of unsteady pressure measurements. Specific applications include Rotorcraft Aerodynamics, Open Rotor, and Supersonic Inlets.
There is considerable interest in measurements of unsteady pressure for evaluation of computational models and study of flow physics on hypersonic inlets, compressors, aeroelasticity, and rotorcraft aerodynamics. This system will provide advancement of the state-of-the-art in this field as the proposed research will develop a system for the measurement of continuous distributions unsteady pressure that requires no physical modifications to the model and produces data with high spatial resolution. ISSI has sold several production PSP systems world-wide. There is significant interest among these customers in fast responding PSP. ISSI is currently involved in discussions with several commercial aircraft manufactures regarding the potential of a fast responding PSP system for flight testing. Development of this system for wind tunnel testing is seen as a first step in this process. More »
There is considerable interest in measurements of unsteady pressure for evaluation of computational models and study of flow physics on hypersonic inlets, compressors, aeroelasticity, and rotorcraft aerodynamics. This system will provide advancement of the state-of-the-art in this field as the proposed research will develop a system for the measurement of continuous distributions unsteady pressure that requires no physical modifications to the model and produces data with high spatial resolution. ISSI has sold several production PSP systems world-wide. There is significant interest among these customers in fast responding PSP. ISSI is currently involved in discussions with several commercial aircraft manufactures regarding the potential of a fast responding PSP system for flight testing. Development of this system for wind tunnel testing is seen as a first step in this process. More »
Project Library
Primary U.S. Work Locations and Key Partners
| Organizations Performing Work | Role | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| Innovative Scientific Solutions, Inc. | Lead Organization | Industry | Dayton, Ohio |
Langley Research Center
(LaRC)
|
Supporting Organization | NASA Center | Hampton, Virginia |
Primary U.S. Work Locations
-
Ohio
-
Virginia
Suggest an Edit
Recommend changes and additions to this project record.