Calibration and use of a MEMS surface fence for wall shear stress measurements in turbulent flows

Microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) sensors are increasingly used for measurements in fluid dynamics since, because of their inherently compact size, they allow access to the information that was previously unavailable. In this paper we describe further testing of a MEMS sensor used to measure surface shear stress. It is a wall-mounted fence that bends under the influence of the pressure difference resulting from the velocity shear at the wall. The fences have been successfully calibrated in a wind tunnel and, as an example of their application, used to determine mean and fluctuating shear stress (along with spectra) in a cylindrical cavity flow.