Enhancement of Signal-to-Noise Ratio of Turbulence Measurements by Cross Correlation

A novel method for the measurement of very low turbulence intensities in fluids, based on a dual heat-transfer transducer and a cross correlator, is described. The minimum measurable turbulence intensity is shown to vary with the square root of the minimum detectable cross-correlation coefficient ρ. The effects of finite additive noise correlation and finite lateral separation between the transducer halves are studied. Details are given of an instrument measuring the normalized cross-correlation coefficient between two time-dependent signals in the frequency range 2 Hz-300 kHz with an accuracy of ±0.05ρ ±0.01. The described correlator is particularly suitable for measurements of quasi-stationary processes. A variation of 10 percent in the level of either input signal results in a correlation error of less than 0.6 percent.