Dynamic Calibration of Three-Component Accelerometer Force Balance System Using Deconvolution

Force measurement in an aerodynamic facility performed to understand the dynamics of the vehicle under actual working conditions. It involves measuring the forces and moments that act on the body. Dynamic calibration of a force balance is performed to understand the behaviour of the force balance on the application of transient loads. It is performed before the actual tests in shock tunnels and wind tunnels. This paper describes the dynamic calibration of an accelerometer force balance housed in a hemispherical model made of aluminium. Impulse load is applied to the model in the three perpendicular directions and a triaxial accelerometer is used to measure the accelerations in the three directions. The input forces are then predicted using deconvolution technique. The experimental and simulated accelerations have been found to have good agreement with each other. The forces predicted using deconvolution are found to have good accuracy as compared to the actual input forces.