Abstract
Accurate average flow velocity determination is essential for flow measurement in many industries, including automotive, chemical, and oil and gas. The ultrasonic transit-time method is common for average flow velocity measurement, but current limitations restrict measurement accuracy, including fluid dynamic effects from unavoidable phenomena such as turbulence, swirls or vortices, and systematic flow meter errors in calibration or configuration. A new spatial averaging method is proposed, based on flexural ultrasonic array transducer technology, to improve measurement accuracy and reduce the uncertainty of the measurement results. A novel two-dimensional flexural ultrasonic array transducer is developed to validate this measurement method, comprising eight individual elements, each forming distinct paths to a single ultrasonic transducer. These paths are distributed in two chordal planes, symmetric and adjacent to a diametral plane. It is demonstrated that the root-mean-square deviation of the average flow velocity, computed using the spatial averaging method with the array transducer is 2.94%, which is lower compared to that of the individual paths ranging from 3.65% to 8.87% with an average of 6.90%. This is advantageous for improving the accuracy and reducing the uncertainty of classical single-path ultrasonic flow meters, and also for conventional multi-path ultrasonic flow meters through the measurement via each flow plane with reduced uncertainty. This research will drive new developments in ultrasonic flow measurement in a wide range of industrial applications.
Highlights
The measurement of average velocity of flowing fluids is vital for flow measurement, which has become increasingly essential for many applications in the oil and gas, aerospace, automotive, power, chemical, and pharmaceutical process industries, in addition to those for a range of military and government operations [1,2,3,4]
The average flow velocity v over the cross-sectional area measured by the eight vA,i = Kc,i vL,i ultrasonic paths can be expressed by Equation
It has been demonstrated through the results presented in this study that in the acquisition of flow measurement data through individual ultrasonic paths between the single transducer and the array elements, spatial averaging can substantially improve the robustness of the measurements to the fluctuations of fluid flow
Summary
The measurement of average velocity of flowing fluids is vital for flow measurement, which has become increasingly essential for many applications in the oil and gas, aerospace, automotive, power, chemical, and pharmaceutical process industries, in addition to those for a range of military and government operations [1,2,3,4]. The overall accuracy from both single-path and multi-path transit-time ultrasonic flow meters relies principally on the velocity information measured via each ultrasonic path, as well as the actual velocity profile of the flowing fluids. Since most conventional single-path and multi-path ultrasonic flow meters tend to extract the velocity information of each flow plane (either diametral or chordal) via only a single or two symmetric ultrasonic paths, the dynamic fluctuations of ultrasonic waves can cause temporal errors in the measurement of average flow velocity for each individual ultrasonic path. This leads to a degradation in the accuracy and quality of the overall flow velocity measurement. Path ultrasonic flow meters and for a wide range of industrial environments and applications
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