Skip to main content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Official websites use .gov
A .gov website belongs to an official government organization in the United States.

Secure .gov websites use HTTPS
A lock ( ) or https:// means you’ve safely connected to the .gov website. Share sensitive information only on official, secure websites.

The Effect of Turbulence on a Multi-Hole Pitot Calibration

Published

Author(s)

Christopher J. Crowley, Iosif I. Shinder, Michael R. Moldover

Abstract

Abstract- Accurate calibrations of multi-hole Pitot tubes require thousands of measurements spanning ranges of the fluid’s velocity, and the pitch and yaw angles. When calibrating a commercially-manufactured multi-hole Pitot tube in NIST’s low-turbulence wind tunnel, we found hysteresis in certain ranges of airspeed, pitch angle, and yaw angle. In the worst case, the hysteresis caused a calibration error of 30 %. We demonstrate that the hysteresis was caused by a flow instability associated with flow separation. A turbulence intensity of only 1 % removes the hysteresis; however, the calibration dependends on the turbulence intensity over the entire range of our measurements (0.25 % to 2 %). Therefore, multi-hole Pitot tubes should be calibrated and used at the same turbulence levels.
Citation
Flow Measurement and Instrumentation
Volume
33

Keywords

airspeed calibration, multi hole Pitot tube, detached boundary layer, and Turbulence.

Citation

Crowley, C. , Shinder, I. and Moldover, M. (2013), The Effect of Turbulence on a Multi-Hole Pitot Calibration, Flow Measurement and Instrumentation, [online], https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=912762 (Accessed March 18, 2024)
Created June 10, 2013, Updated February 19, 2017