Probes for Measuring Pressures in Flowing Gases

Improved pressure probes have been designed to give nearly instantaneous readings of the time-varying local static pressure in flowing gases. The probes have been installed in a wind tunnel (see figure). Probes of this type could also be particularly useful as pressure-sensing instruments to help characterize the instantaneous airflow fields about aircraft; the outputs of these and other instruments could be used, for example, as inputs to advanced digital flight-control systems. These probes could also be used to measure local time-varying pressures in natural-gas pipelines.