Investigations of the vibration effect in a measurement system for air flow phenomena in large pipelines

A measuring system for investigation of the air flow phenomena in large tubes is presented in this paper. The main goal is to measure and analyze the vibration effect of a sensing element used for air velocity and air stream measurement. It was observed that some vibrations occurred and involved damage effect in the flow sensor. The measuring system is based on the strain gauge technology with the use of a virtual instrument in the laboratory equipment. The presented system allows measuring, identifying and analyzing vibrations of the sensor in time and frequency domains. It was created as a virtual instrument, very easy to implement into the entire control system of the stand. It was found that the load of the sensing element was asymmetric and the mean load value, compared to variable loads, arose from disturbances of the air flow around the sensor. It was observed for the examined velocities of the air stream in the range up to 35 m/s.