A technique for phase speed measurements in turbulent flow

Abstract

A technique is described for measuring the local phase speed in a turbulent flow. The technique has been used to measure the phase speed of the Fourier components of the longitudinal velocity fluctuations in grid turbulence. These measurements are unique in that the probe spacing is only twice the Kolmogoroff length scale. The velocity fluctuations were measured with linearized constant-temperature hot-wire anemometers, the outputs of which were digitally sampled and recorded in real time. Digital Fourier analysis techniques were then used to calculate the cross-spectral density of the two velocity measurements. From this, the phase, phase speed, and coherence were calculated. The coherence has been used to estimate the variance of these measurements.