An ultra-fast TSP on a CNT heating layer for unsteady temperature and heat flux measurements in subsonic flows

Abstract

In this paper, the authors demonstrate the application of a modified Ru(phen)-based temperature-sensitive paint which was originally developed for the evaluation of unsteady aero-thermodynamic phenomena in high Mach number but short duration experiments. In the present work, the modified TSP with a temperature sensitivity of up to −5.6%/K was applied in a low Mach number long-duration test case in a low-pressure environment. For the demonstration of the paint’s performance, a flat plate with a mounted cylinder was set up in the High-Speed Cascade Wind Tunnel (HGK). The test case was designed to generate vortex shedding frequencies up to 4300 Hz which were sampled using a high-speed camera at 40 kHz frame rate to resolve unsteady surface temperature fields for potential heat-transfer estimations. The experiments were carried out at reduced ambient pressure of p∞ = 13.8 kPa for three inflow Mach numbers being Ma∞=[0.3;0.5;0.7]. In order to enable the resolution of very low temperature fluctuations down to the noise floor of 10−5 K with high spatial and temporal resolution, the flat plate model was equipped with a sprayable carbon nanotube (CNT) heating layer. This constellation, together with the thermal sensors incorporated in the model, allowed for the calculation of a quasi-heat-transfer coefficient from the surface temperature fields. Besides the results of the experiments, the paper highlights the properties of the modified TSP as well as the methodology.