pRTA (Probe Recovery Temperature Anemometry)

Abstract

It is shown that the recovery temperature measured by a thin thermocouple wire inserted in airflow does not depend on the angle of incidence of the flow onto the wire and agrees very well with the theoretical value assuming the recovery factor of the square root of the Prandtl number. This fact allows RTA (Recovery Temperature Anemometry) employing a sensor of various structures; pRTA (probe RTA) is one of the examples where the thermocouple wire is bent at its contact point forming the probe apex. The paper demonstrates that pRTA measures the same flow velocity distributions in a critical nozzle as those by sRTA (streamwise RTA) where a thermocouple wire is settled parallel to the axis of symmetry of the nozzle.