Simultaneous Measurements of Temperature and Viscosity for Viscous Fluids Using an Ultrasonic Waveguide

Abstract

The characterisation and monitoring of viscous fluids have many important applications. This paper reports a refined ‘dipstick’ method for ultrasonic measurement of the properties of viscous fluids. The presented method is based on the comparison of measurements of the ultrasonic properties of a waveguide that is immersed in a viscous liquid with the properties when it is immersed in a reference liquid. We can simultaneously determine the temperature and viscosity of a fluid based on the changes in the velocity and attenuation of the elastic shear waves in the waveguide. Attenuation is mainly dependent on the viscosity of the fluid that the waveguide is immersed in and the speed of the wave mainly depends on the surrounding fluid temperature. However, there is a small interdependency since the mass of the entrained viscous liquid adds to the inertia of the system and slows down the wave. The presented measurements have unprecedented precision so that the change due to the added viscous fluid mass becomes important and we propose a method to model such a ‘viscous effect’ on the wave propagation velocity. Furthermore, an algorithm to correct the velocity measurements is presented. With the proposed correction algorithm, the experimental results for kinematic viscosity and temperature show excellent agreement with measurements from a highly precise in-lab viscometer and a commercial resistance temperature detector (RTD) respectively. The measurement repeatability of the presented method is better than 2.0% in viscosity and 0.5% in temperature in the range from 8 to 300 cSt viscosity and 40 to 90 °C temperature.

Sensing of Fluidic Features Using Colloidal Microswarms

“…where v D is the spreading rate, and is the fluidic viscosity. The data model between the spreading rate of the swarms and the fluidic viscosity is established as (13). After the spreading rate is obtained, the viscosity of the fluidic environments can be sensed.…”

“…The aspect ratio of the elliptical swarm increases from 1 to 6.01 after 60 s (i.e., the elongation rate is 0.084 s −1 ). Therefore, the fluidic viscosity is sensed to be 3.10 cP based on (13), and the ionic strength of the fluid is sensed to be 71.53 mM according to (14). The estimations of fluidic viscosity and ionic strength in the other cases are conducted with the same method, and the comparisons between the sensed and real features of the fluids in the six cases are shown in Figure 8b.…”

“…Previously, different strategies have been proposed to sense the viscosity and ionic strength in fluidic conditions. , Based on ultrasound, a method for measuring the fluidic viscosity was reported using a waveguide . The ionic strength of fluids was sensed based on the distance between two fluorescent proteins. , Glass particles were operated to sense the viscosity by observing the splashing .…”

Sensors and tribological systems: applications for industry 4.0

“…In recent research related to ultrasonic sensors for viscosity measurement, authors reported the dipstick methods for the measurement of fluid properties, such as viscosity and temperature. The study is the comparison between the ultrasonic properties of the wave-guides that are immersed inside the fluid to the ultrasonic properties of wave-guides that are immersed into the reference fluid (Huang et al , 2021). In the present scenario, the conventional viscosity measurement is not required, as it requires a lot of time.…”

Ultrasonik Akış Ölçümünde Sıcaklık Etkisinin İncelenmesi ve Kompenzasyonu

“…A methodology, that aims to model temperature effects on signal amplitute and waveform of the ultrasound to understand that how temperature affects the measurement, is proposed by Jia et al (2021). Huang et al (2021) employed the transducers to predict temperature value of a specific medium where the ultrasound velocity is known and used to extract temperature. In this study, transducer complex dynamics are investigated under certain temperature and flow conditions with a data acquisition process.…”