Application of the small body pressure transducer

Small body pressure transducers were used in both fixed wing and rotary wing scale models to measure dynamic and static pressures. These models were then tested under controlled wind tunnel conditions and the transducer signals recorded for either on or off line analyses. One experiment using the small body pressure transducers was conducted in the American Aeromechanics Wind Tunnel in order to compare different geometrically shaped rotary wing airfoil sections under dynamic stall conditions. An additional application for the small body pressure transducer was a series of tests conducted in both the French Tunnel, Saclay, France, and the Dutch-German Amsterdam, The Netherlands Wind tunnel. During the foreign tests, data obtained on helicopter rotor noise generated by blade pressure disturbances due to helicopter blade vortex interaction. Both the acoustic signature and the blade pressure transducer outputs were recorded simultaneously. In all of these experiments, special purpose electronic and mechanical hardware for the small body pressure transducers was developed.