Analyzing the Fluid Flow of Transit-Time Ultrasonic Flowmeter with Image Processing Technique and Developing a Quality Metric Depending on Pipe Profile

Murat Alparslan Güngör

doi:10.17694/bajece.654414

Abstract

The ultrasonic transit-time method measures the velocity and quantity of fluids in circular type pipes by using the difference of transit time between the ultrasonic pulses propagating with and against the flow direction. This method gives the average velocity of the fluid along a particular acoustic path. At least two ultrasonic transducers are used for an acoustic path. The multipath ultrasonic flowmeters have more acoustic paths. In this paper, the acoustic path between two transducers is described as pixels for the turbulent flow and formed a flow map for ideal flow conditions such as no elbow or bend depending on pipe profile. Using the obtained pixel values, the average fluid velocity is calculated between two transducers. Finally, a quality metric that calculates the ideal average fluid velocity ratio between the acoustic paths for the turbulent flow is developed. Thus, researchers can evaluate their designs with this quality metric.

Highlights

ACCORDING TO the measurement principle, the ultrasonic flowmeters are divided into two groups: Transit-Time Difference (TTD) and Doppler methods
A quality metric is obtained in this paper, which indicates the ratio of the average fluid velocities of different acoustic paths
The quality metric based on pixel (Qbp) is calculated as follows: Qbp where Qbpr and Qa are the quality metrics for reference and application, respectively and defined as vbp1 vbp 2 (13)

Summary

INTRODUCTION

ACCORDING TO the measurement principle, the ultrasonic flowmeters are divided into two groups: Transit-Time Difference (TTD) and Doppler methods. The simplest way to calculate the weight value is the averaged method involving an weighted average of the path velocities [11]. In another method, the weight values are determined according to the geometric position of the transducers [12]. The developed metric calculates the ideal average fluid velocity ratio between the acoustic paths to obtain a reference value for ideal flow conditions. The following section presents the measurement principle of the transit-time ultrasonic flowmeter.

OPERATING PRINCIPLE OF TRANSIT-TIME ULTRASONIC

FMIFC AND THE PROPOSED QUALITY METRIC

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

CONCLUSION