High Temperature Gradient Pirani Micro-Sensor Designed and Tested for Aerodynamic Wall Pressure Measurement

This paper presents and discusses the first demonstration of aerodynamic wall pressure measurement using a thermal Pirani effect based micro-sensor. The thermal micro-sensor is designed as a suspended micro-hot-wire separated from the substrate by a nanoscale gap, and mechanically supported by perpendicular micro-bridges. The micro-sensor was calibrated for pressure measurement from 10 kPa to 800 kPa. It was then used as aerodynamic wall pressure sensor in a turbulent boundary layer wind tunnel and successfully measured the 1.1 kPa depression occurring in the wind tunnel when the flow velocity goes up to 40 m/s.