The measurement of the pressure distribution over the wing of an aircraft in flight

摘要

A measurement system has been developed for use on a light aircraft to measure the pressure distribution over the wing surfaces. The measurement system was developed as a low-cost alternative to existing advanced measurement systems. The system consisted of low profile, low cost pressure sensors that interfaced digitally with microcontrollers for data acquisition. The pressure sensors and microcontrollers were developed into self-contained sensor modules with all electronic components mounted on flexible circuit board that formed the base of the modules. Two types of module were developed; a module with a single pressure sensor and a module with a row of seven pressure sensors at fifteen millimetre spacing. The total cost of the sensor modules was approximately ninety dollars for a single sensor module and one hundred and forty dollars for the seven sensor module. Studies were carried out using numerical methods to predict the pressure distribution over a NACA2412 airfoil. The numerical studies were used to evaluate the effect of adding the sensor modules to the wing, and the effect of the sensor distribution on measured force coefficients. Numerical predictions were made using the XFOIL software package. This software was validated using the Hess-Smith inviscid panel method. Flight testing was carried out with the pressure distribution measurement system to confirm the operation of the system and to make preliminary measurements. The flight testing focused on the measurement of steady state pressure distributions for comparison with the numerical predictions. Good agreement was found between the measured pressure distributions and the XFOIL predictions. Integration of the pressure distributions enabled comparison of normal force, lift force and quarter chord moment coefficients. The measured force coefficients showed the expected trends with angle of attack although it was found that the limited number of sensor modules used caused large error in the quarter chord moment coefficient compared to the numerical predictions.