Comparison of hot wire/laser velocimeter turbulence intensity measurements

The question of whether a random measure of particle velocities yields a good statistical estimate of the stationary condition of the turbulence flow field was investigated by comparing hot-wire and laser velocimeter turbulence intensity measurements. Great care was taken to insure that the instrument precision of both the laser velocimeter and hot wire was maximized. In this attempt to reduce the measurement uncertainties in the hot wire, direct digitization of the analog output signal was performed with point-by-point conversion to velocity through a spline fit calibration curve and the turbulence intensity function was calculated statistically. Frequent calibrations of the hot wire were performed using the laser velocimeter as the velocity standard to account for the presence of the small seed particles in the air flow and signal drift in the hot wire.