Advanced MEMS Wall Shear Stress Sensors for Fully Resolved Skin Friction Measurements

The Interdisciplinary Consulting Corporation (IC2) proposes to develop an advanced wall shear stress sensor system including an instrumentation-grade, capacitive microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) sensor, advanced fabrication and packaging technology, integrated analog signal conditioning and digital data acquisition electronics, and an improved system calibration.  The goal of this research is to develop wall shear stress sensors with sufficiently small sensing elements to enable fully resolved (both spatially and temporally) skin friction measurements in a variety of flow conditions to address some of the limitations and challenges associated with measurement and quantification of mean and fluctuating wall shear stress in wall-bounded turbulent and transitional flows in subsonic and transonic facilities.