Current ultrasonic clamp-on flow meters consist of a pair of single-element transducers which are carefully positioned before use. This positioning process consists of manually finding the distance between the transducer elements, along the pipe axis, for which maximum SNR is achieved. This distance depends on the sound speed, thickness and diameter of the pipe, and on the sound speed of the liquid. However, these parameters are either known with low accuracy or completely unknown during positioning, making it a manual and troublesome process. Furthermore, even when sensor positioning is done properly, uncertainty about the mentioned parameters, and therefore on the path of the acoustic beams, limits the final accuracy of flow measurements. In this research, we address these issues using an ultrasonic clamp-on flow meter consisting of two matrix arrays, which enables the measurement of pipe and liquid parameters by the flow meter itself. Automatic parameter extraction, combined with the beam steering capabilities of transducer arrays, yield a sensor capable of compensating for pipe imperfections. Three parameter extraction procedures are presented. In contrast to similar literature, the procedures proposed here do not require that the medium be submerged nor do they require a priori information about it. First, axial Lamb waves are excited along the pipe wall and recorded with one of the arrays. A dispersion curve-fitting algorithm is used to extract bulk sound speeds and wall thickness of the pipe from the measured dispersion curves. Second, circumferential Lamb waves are excited, measured and corrected for dispersion to extract the pipe diameter. Third, pulse-echo measurements provide the sound speed of the liquid. The effectiveness of the first two procedures has been evaluated using simulated and measured data of stainless steel and aluminum pipes, and the feasibility of the third procedure has been evaluated using simulated data.

During ultrasonic clamp-on flow metering, Lamb waves propagating in the pipe wall may limit the measurement accuracy by introducing absolute errors in the flow estimates. Upon reception, these waves can interfere with the up and downstream waves refracting from the liquid, and disturb the measurement of the transit time difference that is used to obtain the flow speed. Thus, suppression of the generation of Lamb waves might directly increase the accuracy of a clamp-on flow meter. Existing techniques apply to flow meters with single element transducers. This paper considers the application of transducer arrays and presents a method to achieve a predefined amount of suppression of these spurious Lamb waves based on appropriate amplitude weightings of the transducer elements. Finite element simulations of an ultrasonic clamp-on flow measurement setting will be presented to show the effect of array aperture control on the suppression of the Lamb waves in a 1-mm-thick stainless steel pipe wall. Furthermore, a proofof-principle experiment will be shown that demonstrates a good agreement with the simulations.

Transit-time ultrasonic flow meters are widely used in industry to measure fluid flow. In practice ultrasonic flow meters either show a zero-flow error or suffer from a significant random error due to a limited signal-to-noise ratio, requiring a significant amount of averaging to achieve good precision. This work presents a method that minimizes the zero-flow error whilst keeping the random error low, independent of the hardware used. The proposed algorithm can adjust to changing zero-flow errors while a flow is present. The technique combines the benefits of two common methods of determining the transit-time difference between the upstream and downstream ultrasonic waves: crosscorrelation and zero-crossing detection. The algorithm is verified experimentally using a flow-loop. It is shown that the zero-flow error can be greatly reduced without compromising the random error or increasing circuit complexity.

No abstract

No abstract