Development of a temperature measurement system with application to a jet in a cross flow experiment

A temperature measurement system, which allows the simultaneous sampling of up to 80 separate thermocouples, was developed. The minimum resolution for the system corresponds to + or - 0.16 C per least significant bit of the A/D converter. The time constant values lambda, for each of the 64 thermocouples, were determined experimentally at 7 mps. Software routines were used to correct the measured temperatures for the effect of lambda for each thermocouple. The temperature measurement system was utilized to study the thermal field of a heated jet discharging perpendicularly into a low and a high disturbance level cross stream for a given momentum flux ratio and for three overheated values. The peak instantaneous temperatures reveal that strong molecular diffusion was operative. Various measures of the thermal field, for the disturbed case, suggest that the jet column remains relatively compact while being buffeted by the ambient turbulence field and that its penetration, into the cross wind, is inhibited by the presence of the strong disturbance field.