Numerical Analysis of Transducer Installation Effect on Ultrasonic Gas Flow Meter

Abstract

As for ultrasonic gas flow meters, special attention should be paid to transducer installation effect as the flow disturbed by transducers will greatly affect the transit time determination and accordingly reduce metering accuracy. This paper presents a numerical method to analyze the disturbed effects based on Computational Fluid Dynamic (CFD), which can give valuable guides for transducer installations. Different pipe configurations covering a wide velocity range are modelled to simulate the actual flow field in different chords for three transducer installations including protrusion, recess and half protrusion. Then, detailed results are presented and the mechanism is analyzed to give suggestions about better transducer installations and a modified weighting factor method to improve the incredible error is also given in this paper.

Application of extreme learning machine to gas flow measurement with multipath acoustic transducers

“…In addition to it, nonideal path position [19], transducer protrusion or recess [18,38], uncertainties of geometry parameters for UFM spoolpiece [1] and so on can bring errors into UFM. These error sources are all fixed and changeless when the flow meter is manufactured or installed, after which UFM with these inherent defects can be trained with the multiple path velocities and the expected output and in this way the installation effects as well as manufacture effects can be minimized and even eliminated.…”

“…In addition, many other deviations during real manufacture and installation process will bring in flow disturbances. For example, UFM is installed in a biased angle [1,16,17], protrusion or recess is produced due to unsatisfactory transducers installation [18], or inaccurate path positions are manufactured [19,20].…”