Hot-Wire Anemometers

Introduction
Thermal anemometry is the most common method used to measure instantaneous
fluid velocity. The technique depends on the convective heat loss to the surrounding
fluid from an electrically heated sensing element or probe. If only the fluid velocity
varies, then the heat loss can be interpreted as a measure of that variable.

Two fundamentally different sensor types will be discussed below. Cylindrical sensors
(hot wires and hot films) are most commonly used to measure the fluid velocity while
flush sensors (hot films) are employed to measure the wall shear stress. Hot-wire
sensors are, as the name implies, made from short lengths of resistance wire and are
circular in section. Hot-film sensors consist of a thin layer of conducting material that
has been deposited on a non-conducting substrate. Hot-film sensors may also be
cylindrical but may also take other forms, such as those that are flush-mounted.

Thermal anemometry enjoys its popularity because the technique involves the use of
very small probes that offer very high spatial resolution and excellent frequency
response characteristics. The basic principles of the technique are relatively
straightforward and the probes are difficult to damage if reasonable care is taken.
Most sensors are operated in the constant temperature mode.

Hot-wire anemometers have been used for many years in the study of laminar,
transitional and turbulent boundary layer flows and much of our current understanding
of the physics of boundary layer transition has come solely from hot-wire
measurements. Thermal anemometers are also ideally suited to the measurement of
unsteady flows such as those that arise behind rotating blade rows when the flow is
viewed in the stationary frame of reference. By a transformation of co-ordinates, the
time-history of the flow behind a rotor can be converted into a pitch-wise variation in
the relative frame so that it is possible to determine the structure of the rotor relative
exit flow. Until the advent of laser anemometry or rotating frame instrumentation, this
was the only available technique for the acquisition of rotating frame data.

Cylindrical Sensors
Sensors used for the measurement of velocity in turbomachinery investigations are
invariably of the cylindrical type. Of these, most are simple hot-wires since these offer
the greatest flexibility of use in restricted, often highly unsteady turbomachine
environments.

To optimise the frequency response of an anemometer, the probe should have as small
a thermal inertia as possible and this is consistent with the requirement of a small size.
For work in gases, platinum-coated tungsten of 5 m diameter is most commonly
used (see below) as the sensing element although other sizes and materials are
sometimes used. The wire is supported on prongs that are embedded in non-
conducting (often ceramic) material.

Typical hot wire sensor

Calibration of Cylindrical Sensors

The physics of fluid flow and convective heat transfer are inextricably linked by
relationships of the general form

Nu = ( Re, Pr, Kn, ...geometrical factors )

wheretheNusselt,Reynolds,PrandtlandKnudsenNumbersareallnondimensional
quantities.Inthecontextofacylindricalthermalanemometer,theaboveequation
maybeexpandedtogive
where is the fluid density, U is its velocity and its viscosity, d is a typical
dimension such as the hot-wire diameter, is the heat loss, L is the wire length, k is the
thermal conductivity and the mean-free path of the fluid and T and Ta the
temperatures of the wire and fluid respectively. The geometrical factors referred to
include not only the length-diameter ratio of the cylinder L/d but also quantities such
as the support geometry for the cylinder and the orientation of the sensor with respect
to the flow. It can be seen that the heat loss depends on many parameters.

In 1914, King derived a solution for the heat transfer from an infinite cylinder in an
incompressible low Reynolds number flow that may be written as:

Nu = A' + B' Re0.5

whereA'andB'areconstantssothat

Therateofheatlosstothefluidisequaltotheelectricalpowerdeliveredtothesensor
V2/RwhereVisthevoltagedropacrossthesensorandRisitselectricalresistance.If
thefluidpropertiesandwireresistanceremainconstantthisexpressionreducesto

V2 = A'' + B''U0.5

whereA"andB"areconstants.Whentheconductiveheatlossestothesensor
supportsorthesubstratedonotchangewithfluidvelocity,theconstantAmaybe
replacedbythequantityV02,whereV0isthevoltageacrossthesensorunderzeroflow
conditions.

In practice, the voltage registered at the anemometer output is not that across the
sensor but the e.m.f. E that is applied to the top of the Wheatstone bridge, the two
arms of the bridge acting as potential dividers so that the relationship becomes in
effect

E2 - A2 = B U0.5

TheconstantAmaybereplacedbythezeroflowvoltageE0whenhighaccuracyis
notrequired.Inpractice,thevalueoftheexponentchangeswithsensorandvelocity
asdothevaluesofAandBanditsthereforenecessarytocalibrateeachsensor
individuallyandtocheckthiscalibrationfrequently.Anexponentof0.45isnearerto
thatfoundinpractice.

Since no universal calibration is available, the sensors must be calibrated. To do this, a

low turbulence flow of known velocity must be used. Ideally, the probe should be
placed into it in the same attitude that it will be used.

In use, errors arise due to changes in ambient temperature and other fluid properties,
and due to the deposition of impurities in the flow on the sensor. Standard procedures
are available to correct for the effects of changes in temperature. The time for which a
calibration is valid depends on the individual situation. In high speed wind tunnels,
large particles can remove a wire with annoying frequency.

If care is taken and calibrations performed at frequent intervals, then an accuracy of

better than 1 percent can be achieved for hot-wire velocity measurements in
turbomachines.

Probe Response to angle

When a cylindrical sensor is placed so that its axis is not perpendicular to the flow
direction, there will be a component of velocity that is parallel to the axis of the
sensor. If the sensor has infinite length, then the effective cooling velocity that the
sensor experiences is that which is perpendicular to the sensor; the parallel component
has no effect. Thus, the effective cooling velocity ueff may be obtained from the
expression

u cos = ueff

where is the yaw angle between the flow vector and the normal to the axis of the
sensor. In the case a wire with a finite length, the temperature is not constant over the
length of the wire and aerodynamic perturbations are created by the prongs. These are
taken into account by arguing that the component of velocity that is parallel to the axis
of the wire now contributes to the cooling effect. A simple probe responds to changes
in flow direction in a manner shown in the figure below. The interference of the
prongs can be reduced by using prongs that are more widely spaced and plating the
ends of the sensing wire with copper or gold to ensure there is little resistance heating
except in the central un-plated portion. In this case variation of pitch angle does not
effect the response greatly.

It is important to recognise that cylindrical hot-wire and hot-film sensors are capable
only of determining the magnitude of the velocity (or a vector component) since the
heat transfer is the same whatever the sign of the vector. As a result, conventional
sensors are unsuitable for use when the flow reverses such as happens inside
separation bubbles. Under these circumstances, specialised multiple sensor probes
capable of determining the magnitude and direction of the flow are required.

Typical hot wire response curve to yaw angle

Velocity and Angle Measurements

Two wires arranged as an X probe can be used to make two-dimensional
measurements. In the three-sensor method that is employed when three-dimensional
information is required, the three elements of a probe are usually aligned with the axes
of a rectangular system of co-ordinates. This probe allows the simultaneous
determination of the three velocity components and six turbulence quantities but the
spatial resolution is relatively poor. A reduced spatial resolution implies often restricts
the effective frequency response much more than the thermal response of the
individual sensors.

The calibration and repair of three sensor probes is very time consuming. An
alternative technique to using multi-sensor probes involves the use just one sensor but
placing the sensor at a number of orientations to the flow. Strictly, only three
orientations are required to find the mean components of velocity but the method can
be improved by using the method of least squares.

Turbulence Measurements
The figure below, shows a typical measurement situation where U is the mean fluid
velocity that is normal to the wire and u, v and w are velocity fluctuations in three
perpendicular directions. The axis of the sensor is aligned with the w direction so that
the sensor will have a very poor response to the w component providing that the
length-diameter ratio of the sensor is large (i.e. L/d>200). Therefore, the sensor sees
the effective cooling vector U' which, providing v is not too large, has the same
magnitude as (U+u') so that at low turbulence intensities the wire is measuring the
magnitude of the velocity in the direction of the mean flow. Thus, the stream-

wise turbulence intensity can be derived by calculating the root-mean-square

of the velocity-time history. In isotropic turbulence, this measurement and that of the
mean velocity are in error by about 2 percent when the turbulence intensity is about
20 percent.

Mean (U) and Instantaneous (u') flow velocities

To obtain the components of turbulence that are normal to the mean flow vector, a
variety of two and three sensor techniques are used to determine the magnitude and
direction of the instantaneous flow vector. From this, the time-mean and turbulent
flow properties may be found.

Boundary Layer Measurements

It is an unfortunate consequence of the laws of heat transfer that when a heated
element is positioned close to a solid surface, an increase in heat transfer occurs. A
correction must therefore be made to the general form of King's law if accurate
measurements of the blade surface boundary layers are to be obtained. In the case of a
5 m diameter wire, the effect of wall proximity upon the heat transfer extends to 1-2
mm from the surface so that the effects of wall proximity are present in many
measurements.

The still-air correction technique is the most commonly used. It involves the
measurement of the heat transfer from the wire to the blade surface in still air at the
various locations encountered in the experiment. The heat transfer is proportional to
the square of the bridge output voltage, E 02 in still air. The general form of King's law
equation is then modified to give
 E2 - A2 - [E02(y) - E02()] = B Un

where the constants A, k and n have the same values as determined from a free-stream
calibration and the term in the square brackets represents the increased heat transfer.