An innovative low-profile monolithic constant-temperature anemometer

A constant-temperature anemometer has been developed which uses a single high-fidelity speaker driver as a combined signal and power amplifier. Owing to its small size and simplicity of construction, the anemometer is well suited for applications requiring a large number of channels (such as hot-wire rakes) as well as applications requiring the embedding of instrumentation within confined experimental models (such as reduced-scale wind turbine blades). The anemometer is shown to have performance characteristics similar to those of a commercial anemometer when used under its design conditions. An operating bandwidth as high as 10 kHz can be achieved, which is greater than most available time-resolved digital particle-image velocimetry systems and is shown to be sufficient to track large-scale turbulence structures in channel flow.

► A novel CTA design having only one off-the-shelf semiconductor component is presented.
► The performance of this CTA is compared to that of a commercial unit.
► Though limited in bandwidth, this CTA is suitable for tracking large flow structures.