Implementation and Performance Study of Remotely Operated PXI-Based Wind Tunnel Instrumentation Systems

摘要

A wind tunnel is used in aerodynamic research to study the effects of air moving past solid objects called test models. Most important goal of a wind tunnel is to generate a quality aerodynamic test data for the test models at low cost. Test models are instrumented with various sensors to measure force and pressure experienced by them due to wind flow. In any kind of wind tunnel, users are interested in optimization of the valuable factor time for the execution of wind tunnel study. To achieve this objective, implementation of an automated wind tunnel data acquisition (DAQ) system is urgently required. Although, personal computer (PC) is an excellent data acquisition and control platform for small scale wind tunnel, it has significant implementation challenges for large wind tunnels. Limitations and problems of conventional PC-based instrumentation system can be solved by using PCI extensions for Instrumentation (PXI) platform. This also meets the more specific requirement of wind tunnel test engineer of PXI-system remote operation and control using a host computer placed in the control room. This paper presents the implementation aspects and performance study of remotely operated PXI-based wind tunnel instrumentation systems. These systems have been developed at IIT Kanpur using virtual instrumentation (VI) technique and PXI modular hardware which enhances the productivity and reduces the cost through easy-to-integrate LabVIEW-based application software and PXI modular hardware.