Force measurement using strain-gauge balance in a shock tunnel with long test duration

Force tests were conducted at the long-duration-test shock tunnel JF12, which has been designed and built in the Institute of Mechanics, Chinese Academy of Sciences. The performance tests demonstrated that this facility is capable of reproducing a flow of dry air at Mach numbers from 5 to 9 at more than 100 ms test duration. Therefore, the traditional internal strain-gauge balance was considered for the force tests use in this large impulse facility. However, when the force tests are conducted in a shock tunnel, the inertial forces lead to low-frequency vibrations of the test model and its motion cannot be addressed through digital filtering because a sufficient number of cycles cannot be found during a shock tunnel run. The post-processing of the balance signal thus becomes extremely difficult when an averaging method is employed. Therefore, the force measurement encounters many problems in an impulse facility, particularly for large and heavy models. The objective of the present study is to develop pulse-type sting balance by using a strain-gauge sensor that can be applied in the force measurement of 100 ms test time, especially for the force test of the large-scale model. Different structures of the S-series (i.e., sting shaped balances) strain-gauge balance are proposed and designed, and the measuring elements are further optimized to overcome the difficulties encountered during the measurement of aerodynamic force in a shock tunnel. In addition, the force tests were conducted using two large-scale test models in JF12 and the S-series strain-gauge balances show good performance in the force measurements during the 100 ms test time.