Accurately measuring the total temperature of a high-speed fluid flow is a challenging task that is required in many research areas and industry applications. The difficulty in total temperature measurement generally stems from attempting to minimize measurement error or accurately predict error so it can be accounted for. Conduction error and aerodynamic error are two very common sources of error in total temperature probe measurements. Numerous studies have been performed in prior literature to account for simple cases of both errors. However, the impacts of a mounting strut and freestream flow angle on conduction error and aerodynamic error have not been previously modeled. Both of these effects are very common in gas-turbine applications of total temperature probes. Therefore, a fundamental study was performed to analyze the impact of mount interference and freestream flow angle on a probe's conduction error and aerodynamic error.

An experimental study of aerodynamic error was performed using strut-mounted thermocouples in a high-speed jet at Mach numbers ranging from 0.25-0.72. This study showed that a strut stagnation point can provide aerodynamic error reductions and insensitivity to approach Mach number. An off-angle experimental study of conduction error was also performed using strut-mounted thermocouples at pitch angles ranging from -30° to 30°. High-fidelity Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations with Conjugate Heat Transfer (CHT) were performed in conjunction with the experiments to provide key heat transfer information and flow visualizations. It was identified that unshielded total temperature probes have reduced conduction error at off-angles, but are sensitive to changes in the freestream flow angle. A low-order method was developed to account for mount interference and flow angle effects. The developed low order method utilizes a local Mach number for aerodynamic error predictions and a local Reynolds number for conduction error predictions. This developed low-order method was validated against experiment and 3D, CFD results, and was shown to accurately capture flow angle trends, mount interference effects, and the impacts of varying probe geometry.