As part of a Carnot partnership research network project, the ONERA’s wind tunnels is developing a Pressure Sensitive Paint (PSP) at short response time.
It is to take advantage of the surface aspect for the unsteady phenomena study such as buffeting.
The developments concern painting (response time, luminescence intensity, and sensitivity), excitation source (power), cameras (speed and sensitivity) and also processing software required for the analysis of the mass data produced.
In July our S2MA wind tunnel at Modane conducted a campaign to test a new paint and a new source of illumination. Quality acquisitions have been made up to 5 kHz, thus reaching spectra up to 2.5kHz. The comparison of the resulting spectra with those from the dynamic Kulites sensors is very satisfactory: the potential of the technique has been proved, technique which will soon be offered to our customers using our wind tunnels.
