Measuring small internal pressures along a tube during steady flow

A tube that can accurately measure small strains and pressure profiles during flow of non-Newtonian paste explosives has been designed and strain gaged. Equiangular rosette strain gages were installed along the length of a 6-mm-diam, 0.46-m-long thin-walled aluminum tube. The rosettes were oriented in the classical stress-gage configuration to measure circumferential stress and, hence, internal pressure independent of other stresses. The tube was static calibrated on a floating-piston pressure calibrator. Steady flow calibration was accomplished by extruding a viscous Newtonian silicone oil. Inlet pressure ranged from 0.52 to 2.1 MPa (75 to 300 psi). For the low-pressure 0.52-MPa silicone-oil extrusion, the full-scale strain levels varied from 6 to 53 μm/m. For all eight strain-gage stations, the maximum deviation from a linear pressure profile was equivalent to 0.5 μm/m. A pulsed-current-excitation signal-conditioning and digital data-acquisition system provided the necessary stability and precision to measure these unusually low-strain levels accurately.