A mm-scale aeroelastic oscillation-based anemometer

The flutter of a thin filament can provide a good indication of fluid velocity at small scales. By combining a 'fishtail'-shaped filament's aeroelastic and vortex-forced flutter modes, its oscillation frequency can be confined to scale smoothly with fluid velocity. This principle has been used to produce a low-cost, mm-scale anemometer that measures air flow to ±(5% + 0.5m/s) from 1-25m/s. This paper describes the prototype and the experiments that informed its design, and shows how a similar system could operate at far smaller scales than existing anemometers.

Department dc:contributor.department

Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Dept. of Mechanical Engineering.

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2012

Author dc:creator

• McKay, Ian Salmon

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Gareth H. McKinley.

• Mechanical Engineering.

Statement dc:rights

• M.I.T. theses are protected by copyright. They may be viewed from this source for any purpose, but reproduction or distribution in any format is prohibited without written permission. See provided URL for inquiries about permission.

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/7582

Language dc:language.iso

eng

Handle dc:identifier.uri

http://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/72845

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/72845