Calibration design evaluations through computational analysis and investigation of a six-component wind tunnel balance

The calibration and validation of a low-cost external six-component wind tunnel balance (WTB), designed based on Stewart platform configuration, are reported using four different calibration designs. The balance can be easily customised to measure the aerodynamics loads acting on half-wing and drone models in a wind tunnel. Four calibration designs—central composite design (CCD), Box–Behnken design (BBD), BBD with two active filters and decoupling (BBD-2A), and the modern design of experiments (MDOE)—were thoroughly investigated using different computational and statistical techniques to find the right candidate through analysis of variance (ANOVA). A novel approach employed to find reduced model for each loading component in the four calibration designs is described. Systematic validation of the reduced models is performed by benchmarking them against the standard second-order models. These reduced models will play a vital role during actual calibration and measurements to lower the final uncertainty in the measured force and moment components and reduce the time and cost involved in calibrating a WTB.