Wake survey method of drag measurement ? - Google Groups https://groups.google.com/forum/print/msg/sci.aeronautics/X_ubXSO...

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Wake survey method of drag measurement ?

Olin Perry Norton Oct 22, 1992 10:52 PM

Posted in group: sci.aeronautics

I am thinking about doing some wind tunnel experiments

to measure the drag on a body. I don't want to go into
unnecessary details here, so let's suppose that I want
to measure the drag on a cylinder.

Now, rather than use a balance to measure the drag directly,

I was thinking that it would be much easier to do
a velocity (and maybe static pressure too) survey of the wake.
Then, the momentum deficit in the wake can be found by
integration, and the drag found indirectly.

So far so good. This is a standard technique.

But, I was reading a book on wind tunnel measurements,

specifically:

Low-Speed Wind Tunnel Testing, second edition,

by William H. Rae, Jr. and Alan Pope,
John Wiley and Sons, 1984,
ISBN 0-471-87402-7,
Library of Congress catalog number TL567.W5P694

and this book said (on page 214),

"It is well known that the wake survey is not valid

in a stalled airfoil or where separation is present."
(page 214)

and also (on page 217),

"The wake survey cannot be used to measure drag

of stalled airfoils or of airfoils with flaps down.
Under these conditions a large part of the drag is
caused by rotational losses and does not appear as a
drop in linear momentum."

Now, I was planning to use a wake survey to measure the

drag of a bluff body, probably a cylinder, where
separation is sure to be present. So, this worries me.
Is the wake survey method valid only for streamlined
airfoil shapes with no separation ?

From my (mostly theoretical) knowledge of fluid mechanics,

the statements I quoted above are hard to understand.

Clearly, momentum must be conserved. The drag of the

body must cause an equivalent reduction in the linear
momentum of the flow. I don't understand this talk
about "rotational losses" which contribute to the
drag but don't cause a linear momentum deficit in

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Wake survey method of drag measurement ? - Google Groups https://groups.google.com/forum/print/msg/sci.aeronautics/X_ubXSO...

the wake.

On the other hand, I am not an accomplished wind tunnel

experimentalist. There is a good possibility that Rae and
Pope are right, but I can't see what they are talking
about.

One possibility I thought of is that separated flow

around the body could produce an unsteady wake flow,
due to vortex shedding. Then, an attempt to calculate
the momentum deficit using the time averaged velocity
in the wake could yield the wrong answer. This
could possibly be what Rae and Pope meant, but
that's just a guess on my part.

So, I'm hoping some experienced wind tunnelers out there

in netland can help me. My questions are:

1. What exactly are Rae and Pope talking about ?

2. Is it acceptable to measure the drag of a cylinder

using the wake survey method ?

Thanks in advance,
-Perry Norton
Nor...@DIAL.MsState.edu

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