An External Pressure Measurement System for Complex and Dynamic Surfaces

A proposed new external pressure measurement data system for rotors and wings will use COTS components and specially designed hardware and software. The new measurement data system consists of two parts; a glove-like surface treatment that contains the pressure measurement devices and wires passing to a recording device on the moving rotor blade (or wing) and a rotating data acquisition and storage system. Recovery of high quality data measured in the fixed frame is accomplished by downloading to a portable computer after the rotor is stopped. This simple but novel approach ensures high data quality at low cost because the system is adaptable to existing rotors and wings, without extensive modification of rotor blades. Because slip rings are not required to transfer the rotating data to the fixed frame, there is a high probability of high quality results. In Phase I, a design was developed and key components of the proposed design were validated. In Phase II, a prototype design will be built, tested, and applied in a model-scale and a full-scale research rotor test.