Correcting hot-wire measurements of stream-wise turbulence intensity in boundary layers

The current experimental activity aimed at resolving the scaling of stream-wise turbulence intensity profiles (uu) over bar (+)(y(+)) with Reynolds number in turbulent flat plate boundary layers has brought the largely unresolved issue of correcting systematic errors in hot-wire measurements of (uu) over bar (+)(y(+)) into focus. Here, a heuristic scheme is proposed to generate unique (uu) over bar (+)(y(+);Re-delta*) profiles from data obtained with single hot wires of widely different length, aspect ratio and construction over a large Reynolds number range of 4000 less than or similar to Re-deltaless than or similar to 50 000. A comparison with LDA data and other checks suggest that the present correction scheme produces (uu) over bar (+)(y(+);Re-delta) profiles close to the (unknown) true profiles. (C) 2010 American Institute of Physics. [doi: 10.1063/1.3481146]