Use of pipeline wave propagation model for measuring unsteady flow rate

Nigel Johnston, Min Pan, Sylwester Kudzma, Pengfei Wang

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

26 Citations (SciVal)

Abstract

A novel method for estimation of unsteady flow rate using pressure at two or three points along a pipeline is described in this paper. The pressure data are processed using a wave propagation model to determine the unsteady flow. The comparison and analysis of two-transducer and three-transducer techniques are investigated through simulation. The proposed method is shown to be effective for unsteady flow rate measurement over a high bandwidth. However, if the pressure values from two transducers are used, inaccuracies exist at certain frequencies when the transducer spacing coincides with multiples of half a wavelength. The accuracy can be improved by adding a third transducer with unequal spacing. The three-transducer method has been implemented in experiments and has been found to be robust and reliable.
Original languageEnglish
Article number031203
Pages (from-to)1-8
Number of pages8
JournalJournal of Fluids Engineering: Transactions of the ASME
Volume136
Issue number3
Early online date24 Jan 2014
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Mar 2014

Keywords

  • laminar flow
  • pipe flow
  • wave propagation
  • unsteady flow rate measurement

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