Two New Types of Ultrafast Aircraft Thermometer

Abstract

A new version of an ultrafast aircraft resistance thermometer (UFT-F) with a time constant of the order 10?4 s,for use in both cloudy and cloudless air, is described. It evolved from an earlier version (UFT-S). Its sensing element is similar to that in UFT-S and consists of a 5-mm-long and 2.5-?m-thick platinum-coated tungsten wire, located on a rotatable vane behind a thin vertical rod that protects the sensor against direct impact of cloud droplets and other objects. Such construction introduces much smaller thermal disturbances than do more massive housings of other types of immersion thermometers and permits taking full advantage of low thermal inertia of the sensing wire. However, aerodynamic disturbances created by vortex shedding from the protective rod induce adiabatic fluctuations of temperature, which appear on the temperature records as ?noise.? In the case of the UFT-S the level of this noise has become intolerable at airspeeds of about 40 m s?1, limiting applicability of this instrument to slow aircraft or gliders. For UFT-F the shape of the protective rod has been redesigned and endowed with a special system of reducing aerodynamic disturbances behind it, which made it usable at airspeeds up to 100 m s?1 in cloudless air or warm clouds. For use in supercooled clouds, a special variety of UFT-F (denoted here UFT-D) has been designed. As in its predecessor, its sensing element is a 5-mm-long, 2.5-?m-thick, platinum-coated tungsten resistive wire protected against impact of cloud droplets by an airfoil-shaped rod, but all its icing-sensitive parts are electrically heated to prevent buildup of ice. This modification required a total change of mechanical structure of the instrument. Tests during the Third Canadian Freezing Drizzle Experiment showed that UFT-D can perform fairly well in water clouds supercooled down to at least ?8°C and that its heating system introduces no intolerable disturbances into the record. Use of UFT-D in ice or mixed clouds is limited by the fact that the protective rod is not effective enough against ice crystals bigger than about 200 ?m, which can quickly destroy the delicate sensing element. The paper gives details of construction as well as results of wind tunnel and in-flight tests of these instruments.