Effects of Inner Surface Roughness and Asymmetric Pipe Flow on Accuracy of Profile Factor for Ultrasonic Flow Meter

Abstract

Flow profile factors (PFs), which adjust measurand to real flow rates, also strongly depend on flow profiles. To determine profile factors for actual power plants, manufactures of flowmeters usually conduct factory calibration tests under ambient flow conditions. Indeed, flow measurements with high accuracy for reactor feedwater require them to conduct calibration tests under real conditions, such as liquid conditions and piping layouts. On the contrary, as nuclear power plants are highly aging, readings of flowmeters for reactor feedwater systems drift due to the changes of flow profiles. The causes of those deviations are affected by the change of wall roughness of inner surface of pipings. We have conducted experiments to quantify the effects of flow patterns on the PFs due to pipe roughness and asymmetric flow, and the results of our experiments have shown the effects of elbows and pipe inner roughness, which strongly affect to the creation of the flow patterns. Those changes of flow patterns lead to large errors in measurements with transit time (time-of-flight: TOF) ultrasonic flow meters. In those experiments, changes of pipe roughness result in the changes of PFs with certain errors. Therefore, we must take into account those effects in order to measure the flow rates of feedwater with better accuracy in actual power plants.