Total-pressure-tube averaging in pulsating flows.

A number of total-pressure tubes were tested in a nonsteady flow generator in which the fraction of period that pressure is a maximum is approximately 0.8, thereby simulating turbomachine-type flow conditions. The tests were performed at a pressure level of 1 bar, for Mach numbers up to near 1, and frequencies up to 3 kHz. Most of the tubes indicated a pressure which was higher than the true average. Organ-pipe resonances which further increased the indicated pressure were encountered within the tubes at discrete frequencies. There was no obvious combination of tube diameter, length, and/or geometry variation used in the tests which resulted in negligible averaging error. A pneumatic-type probe was found to measure true average pressure, and is suggested as a comparison instrument to determine whether nonlinear averaging effects are serious in unknown pulsation profiles.