Road to Acquisition: Preparing a MEMS Microphone Array for Measurement of Fuselage Surface Pressure Fluctuations

Preparing and pre-testing experimental setups for flight tests is a lengthy but necessary task. One part of this preparation is comparing newly available measurement technology with proven setups. In our case, we wanted to compare acoustic Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) to large and proven...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Micromachines (Basel) 2021-08, Vol.12 (8), p.961
Main Authors: Ahlefeldt, Thomas, Haxter, Stefan, Spehr, Carsten, Ernst, Daniel, Kleindienst, Tobias
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Acoustics
Airframes
Arrays
flight test
Flight tests
Fuselages
Kapton foil
Low speed wind tunnels
Microelectromechanical systems
microphone array
Microphones
Noise
Pressure
propeller
Sensors
Transonic wind tunnels
Turboprop aircraft
Turboprop engines
turbulent boundary layer
wave number decomposition
Wavelengths
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Summary:Preparing and pre-testing experimental setups for flight tests is a lengthy but necessary task. One part of this preparation is comparing newly available measurement technology with proven setups. In our case, we wanted to compare acoustic Micro-Electro-Mechanical Systems (MEMS) to large and proven surface-mounted condenser microphones. The task started with the comparison of spectra in low-speed wind tunnel environments. After successful completion, the challenge was increased to similar comparisons in a transonic wind tunnel. The final goal of performing in-flight measurements on the outside fuselage of a twin-engine turboprop aircraft was eventually achieved using a slim array of 45 MEMS microphones with additional large microphones installed on the same carrier to drawn on for comparison. Finally, the array arrangement of MEMS microphones allowed for a complex study of fuselage surface pressure fluctuations in the wavenumber domain. The study indicates that MEMS microphones are an inexpensive alternative to conventional microphones with increased potential for spatially high-resolved measurements even at challenging experimental conditions during flight tests.
ISSN:2072-666X
2072-666X
DOI:10.3390/mi12080961