Development of a high-precision and wide-range ultrasonic water meter

Abstract

Ultrasonic water meters offer a number of advantages such as non-intrusiveness, low pressure loss, high accuracy, low power consumption and long service life, which make them a viable option for the next generation of smart water meters. However, the existing ultrasonic water meters have difficulties in balancing the range and accuracy. Therefore, in order to address this issue, this study proposes a novel ultrasonic water meter featured with high-precision and wide-range. First of all, the flow measurement principle of the ultrasonic time difference method is investigated, and a flow measurement model that includes the parameter of radial transit time (TD) is developed. The ultrasonic water meter is designed based on comprehensive consideration of the three aspects of hardware, software and algorithms, and a series of experiments are conducted to verify the performance of the water meter. Eighteen verification test points with the flow range of 0.015–4.509 m3/h are carried out, the results of which suggest that the accuracy level of the ultrasonic water meter reaches 0.5, with the repeatability of 0.09%, and the range ratio of 300:1, indicating the achievement of the design goal of high-precision and wide-range.