A stereo photogrammetry system for model position and attitude measurement in hypersonic wind tunnel testing

In this paper, a measurement system based on stereo photogrammetry is proposed for position and attitude measurements of test models in hypersonic wind tunnel testing. Several adaptations were made to an existing stereo photogrammetry system to promote its routine use as a primary wind tunnel measurement system. First, cameras were installed in the wind tunnel test section to decrease the measurement distance and increase the base length, which helped improve the measurement accuracy. To deal with camera vibration caused by the freestream, a camera orientation method is proposed to estimate the exterior parameters of each frame relative to the tunnel coordinate system. Second, a scheme to determine the model coordinate system is proposed, which does not require placement of the targets at known locations of the model. Third, to solve the recognition problem of motion-blurred target images, a network was adopted for stereo deblurring and a stereo blur dataset simulating the wind tunnel test environment was generated for network training. To develop the novel stereo photogrammetry system, experiments were conducted in both the laboratory and a hypersonic wind tunnel at the China Aerodynamics Research and Development Center. The experimental results suggest that the proposed measurement system is practicable for position and attitude measurements of test models in hypersonic wind tunnel testing.