Transonic Wind Tunnel Testing

A transonic wind tunnel providing design verification to the aero industry uses Prosig data acquisition, controlled directly by the tunnel's own computer, to capture fully qualified test data.

Project at a glance

Customer: Transonic wind tunnel operator providing design verification to the aero industry
Location:
Applications: Aerospace
Products used: P8048 (now DATS-hyper12); DATS Toolbox software

Background

The customer operates a transonic wind tunnel that provides a design verification service to the aero industry. Prosig data acquisition equipment is used for test measurement and post-processing.

The challenge

Wind tunnel tests typically need analogue data capture from 16 up to 128 channels, depending on the complexity of the test. At high sample rates the volume of data can be considerable, and every data set has to be linked to the exact tunnel conditions at the moment it was captured.

The solution

The Prosig P8048 system, the predecessor to today's DATS-hyper12, can capture 128 channels simultaneously at up to 50 kS/s. To manage data volumes, it offers split sampling, so some channels can be recorded at sub-multiples of the main rate. It can be configured as several independent systems or as one large system, depending on the customer's requirements.

A key feature is that the Prosig software can be operated remotely by the tunnel control computer. In this mode, the tunnel control software decides when to take data, for how long, the name of the data file and the metadata that qualifies the capture, such as the set point number, tunnel temperature and pressure.

The results

Each test campaign is controlled end to end by the tunnel control computer
Metadata is stored with the raw data at source, so post-processing is always performed on fully qualified data
Data sets can be selected and processed using the metadata in standard DATS software
High data integrity from capture through to reporting