A two-channel ultrasonic flowmeter based on AlN piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers arrays with improved cross-correlation method

Abstract

This paper presents a highly accurate two-channel ultrasonic flowmeter based on AlN piezoelectric micromachined ultrasonic transducers (PMUTs) to measure flow rate in small-diameter pipes (9.6 mm). The ultrasonic transducers consist of four 10 by 10 PMUTs arrays with resonant frequency of 1 MHz in air. The ultrasonic transducers are excited by continuous sine voltage, and the transmitted and received signals are subjected to cross-correlation operation to obtain the time delay of the ultrasonic wave in the liquid. A dual-channel design of the flowmeter can reduce measurement errors by taking the average value. To reduce errors in the cross-correlation operation, an iterative algorithm is proposed, which effectively improves the measurement accuracy. The flowmeter is evaluated in flow range of 3.5–10 l min−1, and has a small relative error of 0.7%.