A mm-Scale Aeroelastic Oscillation-Based Anemometer

By combining the aeroelastic and vortex-forced flutter modes of a thin plastic strip, its oscillation frequency can be confined to scale monotonically with fluid velocity. This principle has been used to produce a low-cost, mm-scale anemometer that measures air speed to ±(5% + 0.5m/s) from 1-18m/s....

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Bibliographic Details
Main Author: McKay, Ian (Contributor)
Other Authors: Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Department of Mechanical Engineering (Contributor)
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: ASME International, 2014-03-10T17:28:54Z.
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Summary:By combining the aeroelastic and vortex-forced flutter modes of a thin plastic strip, its oscillation frequency can be confined to scale monotonically with fluid velocity. This principle has been used to produce a low-cost, mm-scale anemometer that measures air speed to ±(5% + 0.5m/s) from 1-18m/s. The device uses a 2mm slot-type photointerrupt detector to monitor the fundamental frequency of a 7μm thick Kapton strip suspended parallel to air flow. This paper describes the prototype and three of the experiments that informed its design. These investigated the effect of a bluff body on flutter onset velocity, the effect of filament geometry on bending position, and the effect of the superposition of the vortex-forced and aeroelastic flutter modes on discretely-measured flutter frequency. The experiments demonstrate that a trapezoidal filament in the wake of a similarly-sized bluff body is well-suited for this novel flow measurement strategy.