Experimental evaluation of a 3D-printed fluidic system for a directional anemometer

An evolution of a previously proposed anemometer capable of detecting both the magnitude and the direction of the wind on a plane is proposed. The device is based on a recently formalized principle, consisting of combining the differential pressures measured across distinct diameters of a cylinder to estimate the wind velocity and incidence angle. Differently from previous sensors based on the same principle, the proposed anemometers use 3D printing to fabricate the channel structure that calculates the pressure combination in the fluidic domain. Furthermore, commercial sensors with low power consumption are used to read the two pressures that result from the fluidic processing. The whole fabrication procedure requires inexpensive equipment and can be adopted by small enterprises or research laboratories. Two original channel structures, predicted by previous theoretical work but never experimentally validated, are proposed. The results of detailed experiments performed in a wind tunnel are reported.