A HIGH-TEMPERATURE ASSESSMENT OF AIR-COOLED UNSTEADY PRESSURE TRANSDUCERS

This paper discusses the problem of measuring unsteady pressure in a h igh-temperature environment using standard transducers. Commercially a vailable cooling adaptars for these transducers use water as the cooli ng medium to provide thermal protection. This arrangement is suitable only for some test bed applications and not suitable for integration i nto in-flight active control systems. An assessment of the cooling eff ectiveness of a commercial water-cooled adapter using air as the cooli ng medium is presented using an experimentally validated finite elemen t heat transfer model. The assessment indicates survival of an air-coo led transducer, itself rated to 235 degrees C, at source flow temperat ures up to 800 degrees C.