An Adaptive Response Compensation Technique for the Constant-Current Hot-Wire Anemometer

An adaptive response compensation technique has been proposed to compensate for the response lag of the constant-current hot-wire anemometer (CCA) by taking advantage of digital signal processing technology. First, we have developed a simple response compensation scheme based on a precise theoretical expression for the frequency response of the CCA (Kaifuku et al. 2010, 2011), and verified its effectiveness experimentally for hot-wires of 5 μm, 10 μm and 20 μm in diameter. Then, another novel technique based on a two-sensor probe technique—originally developed for the response compensation of fine-wire thermocouples (Tagawa and Ohta 1997; Tagawa et al. 1998)—has been proposed for estimating thermal time-constants of hot-wires to realize the in-situ response compensation of the CCA. To demonstrate the usefulness of the CCA, we have applied the response compensation schemes to multipoint velocity measurement of a turbulent wake flow formed behind a circular cylinder by using a CCA probe consisting of 16 hot-wires, which were driven simultaneously by a very simple constant-current circuit. As a result, the proposed response compensation techniques for the CCA work quite successfully and are capable of improving the response speed of the CCA to obtain reliable measurements comparable to those by the commercially-available constant-temperature hot-wire anemometer (CTA).