Real-Time health monitoring system for Trisonic Wind Tunnel Nozzle

Instrumentation Engineering

The CSIR-NAL, National Trisonic Aerodynamic Facilities (NTAF) divisions, 1.2m*1.2m Trisonic wind tunnel is operated in Sub-sonic, Transonic and Supersonic Mach number testing (0.2-4.0). The Flexible Nozzle (FN) is the important component of the Trisonic wind tunnel. The nozzle is formed by a pair of flexible steel plates, set to form appropriate contour along the top and bottom of the flow channel. It is operated and controlled by hydraulic actuators located at 17 stations. The over-stress encountered on these plates due to faulty curvature (excessive bending) settings, or Malfunctioning of hydraulic jacks such as jamming of the actuating cylinders, or Curvature sensor problems. The curvature sensor assembly is mounted on flexible nozzle edge at different locations to identify the over stress. Due to Wind Tunnel test duration limit (around 30-40 seconds) and series connected sensors, it is highly challenging to identify the stress occurrence at the particular station by scanning through the selector switch. To overcome this Problem, real-time health monitoring system for flexible nozzle has been implemented in the 1.2m Trisonic Wind Tunnel. Here, the limit switch outputs are parallelly connected to NI-based hardware. In case of the stress occurrence on the plates, it will be recorded and displayed in real-time software.

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