Comparison of new ultrasonic and hot wire thermo-anemometer gas flow meters

Abstract

This paper reviews the comparison of a newly developed ultrasonic gas flow meter with a standard hot wire thermo-anemometer flow meter. The flow meters are compared utilizing a wind tunnel to induce flow through the meters. The ultrasonic gas flow was been developed and demonstrated under a NAVAIR-sponsored program. The ultrasonic meter uses acoustic pulse trains to measure gas flows through pipes or tubes in a wide range of configurations and conditions while maintaining a useable large dynamic. The demonstrated performance in the wind tunnel testing is over a large magnitude of flow and shows an extremely linear output measurement. The ultrasonic gas flow meter is bidirectional, and non-intrusive. The demonstrated performance of the ultrasonic meter is very promising to the other commercially compared flow meters.