Novel primary standard for dynamic pressure up to 500 MPa

Dynamic pressure measurements at high pressures, up to 500 MPa, are relevant for testing the performance and safety of ammunition, explosives, and weapons. Current primary standards for realizing dynamic pressure are laborious to use, making them impractical for daily calibration work. Consequently, industry still calibrates sensors using static methods, which can result in errors up to 10 %. A new design of a drop-weight device was developed by VTT MIKES, the National Metrology Institute of Finland, to overcome these issues. Based on this novel design, a high-pressure primary standard up to 500 MPa was developed for GUM, the National Metrology Institute of Poland. In this paper, the design principles and initial test results are presented together with a preliminary uncertainty budget. Based on this study, an uncertainty level of 0.9 % (k = 2) is achieved, which is a significant improvement compared to current state-of-the-art of around 2 %.