Design of an Optimal Tilt Measurement Unit for Wind Tunnel Balance

The wind tunnel is one of the most widely used equipment in the design of flight vehicles to investigatethe aerodynamic pre-flight behavior of these vehicles. On the other hand, one of the most essentialparts of the wind tunnel is the balance tilt measurement unit which measures the orientation of thebalance at movements with high accuracy. There are several ways to design the tilt measurement unit ofwind tunnel balance. One of them is to use a proper and efficient accelerometer with considerations inselecting, and installing accelerometers for designing the tilt measurement unit of wind tunnel balance.These Considerations are necessary to reduce the measuring error and make the test results reliable. Inthis paper, the important parameters in implying the accelerometer for the design of the tiltmeasurement unit for wind tunnel balance of Shiraz University are investigated. At first, the effectiveparameters will be presented and then the proper accelerometers can be used in practice areintroduced. In the following, several ways to install and use these accelerometers will be presented andthen the most optimal design method will be selected.

Keywords:

Wind tunnel , balance , tilt measurement unit , accelerometer , calibration