Structural optimization to improve the performance of turbine flowmeter under different pressure conditions

Abstract

Gas turbine flowmeters are one of the most commonly used flowmeters. However, the pressure of the fluid flow has a great influence on their performance. To explore the influence mechanism and improve their performance, experiments and CFD simulations are carried out. The flow field analysis shows that the length of the upstream flow conditioner, the ratio of hub radius to housing inner radius, the blade tip clearance, and the blade overlap degree are the key factors that affect the performance of the gas turbine flowmeter. Accordingly, seven optimization schemes are proposed, which are determined by CFD simulations and experiments. The average meter factor-pressure error Em-n is proposed to evaluate the performance of the gas turbine flowmeter under different pressures. The results show that after optimization, the average meter factor-pressure error of the gas turbine flowmeter is reduced from 2.23% to 0.95%.