Integration method of multipath ultrasonic flowmeter based on velocity distribution

Abstract

The error introduced by the integration method greatly affects the measurement accuracy of the multipath ultrasonic flowmeter. In this paper, a multipath ultrasonic flowmeter integration method based on velocity distribution is proposed, taking a DN400 double-side eight-path ultrasonic flowmeter as an example. The velocity distribution function in the plane of the acoustic path is fitted based on the simulated flow field information from the simulation. The integral weight function is determined from the velocity distribution, and the optimal relative path heights and weights are determined within the range. The integration results are compared with that of the traditional Gauss-Jacobi and the OWICS (Optimized Weighted Integration Method for Circular Sections) integration methods. The results show that the proposed method is superior to the traditional integration methods with the integration error reduced to −0.0164%. This integral method is applied to DN393.5 and DN50 multipath ultrasonic flowmeters to verify its applicability.