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Analysis of differential infrared thermography for boundary layer transition detection

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Abstract

This paper presents an analysis of the differential infrared thermography (DIT) technique, a contactless method of measuring the unsteady movement of the boundary layer transition position on an unprepared surface. DIT has been shown to measure boundary layer transition positions which correlate well with those from other measurement methods. In this paper unsteady aerodynamics from a 2D URANS solution are used and the resulting wall temperatures computed. It is shown that the peak of the temperature difference signal correlates well with the boundary layer transition position, but that the start and end of boundary layer transition cannot be extracted. A small systematic time-lag cannot be reduced by using different surface materials, but the signal strength can be improved by reducing the heat capacity and heat transfer of the surface layer, for example by using a thin plastic coating. Reducing the image time separation used to produce the difference images reduces the time-lag and also the signal level, thus the optimum is when the signal to noise ratio is at the minimum which can be evaluated.

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Fig. 1

From Uenal and Grieb (2013)

Fig. 2

From Richter et al. (2016)

Fig. 3

From Raffel et al. (2015)

Fig. 4

From Raffel et al. (2015)

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Abbreviations

\(\alpha \) :

Instantaneous angle of attack (\(^\circ \))

\(\alpha _0\) :

Mean angle of attack (\(^\circ \))

\(\alpha _1\) :

Pitching amplitude (\(^\circ \))

\(a_d\) :

Thermal diffusivity (m\(^2\)/s)

c :

Airfoil chord length (m)

\(C_\mathrm{f}\) :

Skin friction coefficient

\(C_\mathrm{p}\) :

Pressure coefficient

\(\sigma C_\mathrm{p}\) :

Standard deviation in \(C_\mathrm{p}\)

C :

Specific heat capacity (J/kg/K)

\(\Delta T\) :

Temperature difference between two times (K)

\(\epsilon \) :

Emissivity

f :

Pitching frequency (Hz)

\(f_\mathrm{i}\) :

Image time separation (acquisition) frequency (Hz)

\(f_0\) :

Focal length (m)

\(f\times t\) :

Normalised period time

\(H_\mathrm{L}\) :

Lamp heat flux (W/m\(^2\))

\(k_\mathrm{v}\) :

Thermal conductivity vertically (W/m/K)

\(k_\mathrm{h}\) :

Thermal conductivity horizontally (W/m/K)

M :

Mach number

N :

Boundary value for the transition code

\(\dot{q}\) :

Heat flux (W)

\(\rho \) :

density (kg/m\(^3\))

Re :

Reynolds number

t :

Time (s)

T :

Wall temperature (K)

\(T_\mathrm{r}\) :

Flow recovery temperature (K)

\(\mathrm{{Tu}}\) :

Freestream turbulence level

v :

Local flow velocity (m/s)

x :

Coordinate in the flow direction (m)

y :

Coordinate in breadth (m)

z :

Coordinate in depth (vertical) (m)

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Acknowledgements

This work was done within the DLR projects FAST-Rescue and STELAR.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. German Aerospace Center (DLR), Institute of Aerodynamics and Flow Technology, Bunsenstrasse 10, 37073, Göttingen, Germany

    A. D. Gardner, C. C. Wolf & M. Raffel

  2. Department of Mechanical Engineering, Bundeswehr University Munich, 85577, Neubiberg, Germany

    C. Eder

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  1. A. D. Gardner
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  2. C. Eder
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  3. C. C. Wolf
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  4. M. Raffel
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Correspondence to A. D. Gardner.

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Gardner, A.D., Eder, C., Wolf, C.C. et al. Analysis of differential infrared thermography for boundary layer transition detection. Exp Fluids 58, 122 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00348-017-2405-z

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