Velocity and Pressure Measurements of the Simulated Tornado-like Vortex

The experiments were conducted in a large-scale Ward-type simulator at Texas Tech University known as the VorTECH simulator. A 4-hole Cobra probe (Turbulent Flow Instrumentation Pty Ltd) with a dedicated data acquisition system and a 12-hole Omniprobe (Aeroprobe Corporation) sampled by a Scanivalve pressure scanner were used for the velocity measurements, with these probes chosen for their complementing characteristics. In addition to the velocity measurements, the static pressures at 195 axisymmetric taps evenly spaced at 0.0191m along a radial line on the simulator floor (henceforth referred to simply as surface pressures) were also measured in the experiments. The Scanivalve system used to sample the Omniprobe was also used for the pressure measurements.