A Probabilistic Uncertainty Estimation Method for Turbulence Parameters Measured by Hot-Wire Anemometry in Short-Duration Wind Tunnels

Abstract

A robust and complete uncertainty estimation method is developed to quantify the uncertainty of turbulence quantities measured by hot-wire anemometry (HWA) at the inlet of a short-duration turbine test rig. The uncertainty is categorized into two macro-uncertainty sources: the measurement-related uncertainty (the uncertainty of each instantaneous velocity sample) and the uncertainty stemming from the statistical treatment of the time series. The former is addressed by the implementation of a Monte Carlo (MC) method. The latter, which is directly related to the duration of the acquired signal, is estimated using the moving block bootstrap (MBB) method, a nonparametric resampling algorithm suitable for correlated time series. This methodology allows computing the confidence intervals of the spanwise distributions of mean velocity, turbulence intensity, length scales, and other statistical moments at the inlet of the turbine test section.