Pulsed wire anemometer: review and further developments

Abstract

The purpose of the present paper is to review work that has been done on the pulsed wire anemometer technique and also suggest further developments that could be made in its range of application. The paper discusses the three types of probes that have been used in pulsed wire anemometry: the crossed wire velocity probe, the parallel wire wall shear stress probe and the parallel wire velocity probe. The work shows that the crossed wire and the parallel wire techniques can be used to make velocity, turbulence and wall shear stress measurements in highly turbulent flows without any upper restriction on turbulence level. Comments are also made on the potential of a parallel wire probe for use in highly turbulent flows that would enable higher order velocity cross-product terms to be measured.