Effects of experimental conditions on dynamic measurement characteristics of flowmeters

Abstract

After long-term service, flowmeter characteristics such as uncertainty or dynamic response will change due to normal wore structure. A dedicate system is presented in this article. It consists of a piezoelectric stack, a double-nozzle flapper valve, a reference restrictor with pressure difference transducer and a return restrictor. In order to well understand how experimental condition affects dynamic measurement characteristics of a flowmeter, two gear flowmeters and one turbine flowmeter are taken as study objects, on which simulation and experiment are implemented. Supply pressure of the system and excitation voltage applied to the piezoelectric stack are selected as two typical experimental conditions. Relations between these two parameters and dynamic performance of flowmeters are analyzed. The experimental results agree well with the simulation. The experimental results indicate that higher supply pressure and excitation voltage lead to wider range flow rate, which tends to extend the response duration of the indicated value. The proposed index, response duration per unit flow rate variation, can effectively describe the response speed of a flowmeter under different conditions.