Convection Calibration of Schmidt-Boelter Heat Flux Gages in Shear and Stagnation Air Flow

This work reports the convection calibration of Schmidt-Boelter heat flux gages in shear and stagnation air flow. The gages were provided by Sandia National Laboratories and included two one-inch diameter and two one-and-one-half-inch diameter Schmidt-Boelter heat flux gages. In order to calibrate the sensors a convection calibration facility has been designed, including a shear test stand, a stagnation test stand, an air heater and a data acquisition system. The current physical model for a combined radiation and convection heat transfer environment uses an additional thermal resistance around the heat flux gage. This model clearly predicts a non-linear dependency of the gage sensitivity over a range of heat transfer coefficients. A major scope of this work was to experimentally verify the relation found by the model assumptions. Since the actual heat sink temperature is not known and cannot be measured, three different cases have been examined resulting in three different sensitivities for one pressure value, which is the gage sensitivity for the not cooled case and the gage sensitivity for the cooled case, based on the plate temperature or on the cooling water temperature. All of the measured sensitivities for shear as well as for stagnation flow fit well in the theory and show the non-linear decay for increasing heat transfer coefficient values. However, the obtained data shows an offset in the intersection with the sensitivity at zero heat transfer coefficient. This offset might arise from different radiation calibration techniques and different surface coatings of test gage and reference standard.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master of Science

Level thesis:degree_level

masters

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Mechanical Engineering

Department dc:contributor.department

Mechanical Engineering

Grantor dc:publisher

Virginia Tech

Year dc:date.issued

2006

Author dc:creator

• Hoffie, Andreas Frank

Chair dc:contributor.committeechair

• Diller, Thomas E.

Committee members dc:contributor.committeemember

• Huxtable, Scott T.
• Vlachos, Pavlos P.

• Heat transfer
• Heat flux
• Schmidt-Boelter gages
• Convection calibration

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

Dc Identifier Other

etd-03062007-120201

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/31422