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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 fluids velocity, and the pitch and yaw angles. When calibrating a commercially-manufactured multi-hole Pitot tube in NISTs 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.
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 October 7, 2025)