Assessment of uncertainties in hot-wire anemometry and oil-film interferometry measurements for wall-bounded turbulent flows

TL;DR

This study evaluates the uncertainties in hot-wire anemometry and oil-film interferometry measurements for wall-bounded turbulent flows, highlighting the importance of parameter correlations and flow quality in measurement accuracy.

Contribution

It introduces a Bayesian inference approach with error-in-variable modeling to assess uncertainties, accounting for parameter correlations often neglected in prior studies.

Findings

Uncertainty estimates are lower when parameter correlations are included.

HWA measurements are most sensitive to wire voltage; OFI to fringe velocity.

Relative errors in wall-shear stress, friction velocity, and viscous length are below 0.5%.

Abstract

In this study, the sources of uncertainty of hot-wire anemometry (HWA) and oil-film interferometry (OFI) measurements are assessed. Both statistical and classical methods are used for the forward and inverse problems, so that the contributions to the overall uncertainty of the measured quantities can be evaluated. The correlations between the parameters are taken into account through the Bayesian inference with error-in-variable (EiV) model. In the forward problem, very small differences were found when using Monte Carlo (MC), Polynomial Chaos Expansion (PCE) and linear perturbation methods. In flow velocity measurements with HWA, the results indicate that the estimated uncertainty is lower when the correlations among parameters are considered, than when they are not taken into account. Moreover, global sensitivity analyses with Sobol indices showed that the HWA measurements are most sensitive to the wire voltage, and in the case of OFI the most sensitive factor is the calculation of fringe velocity. The relative errors in wall-shear stress, friction velocity and viscous length are 0.44%, 0.23% and 0.22%, respectively. Note that these values are lower than the ones reported in other wall-bounded turbulence studies. Note that in most studies of wall-bounded turbulence the correlations among parameters are not considered, and the uncertainties from the various parameters are directly added when determining the overall uncertainty of the measured quantity. In the present analysis we account for these correlations, which may lead to a lower overall uncertainty estimate due to error cancellation. Furthermore, our results also indicate that the crucial aspect when obtaining accurate inner-scaled velocity measurements is the wind-tunnel flow quality, which is more critical than the accuracy in wall-shear stress measurements.