Analysis Method for the Design of Compensated Pitot-Static Probes for Use on General Aviation Aircraft

Pitot-static probes are used on aircraft to measure total and static pressure, necessary for airspeed and altitude information. Aerodynamic compensation is often desired to obtain accurate freestream static pressure readings when the instrument is located near regions of disturbed flow generated by the aircraft's forebody. In this study, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been used to analyze surface pressures on the forebody, the probe, and on forebody/probe configurations for a transonic business jet. Compensation techniques and validation cases are presented. Results indicate that CFD can be effective in locating static pressure ports in a region of zero pressure coefficients (C_p).