1997

Knuuttila, Matti

The study demonstrates a new kind of acoustic method for gas flow measurement. The method uses upstream and downstream propagating low frequency plane wave and correlation techniques for volume flow rate determination. The theory of propagating low frequency plane waves in the pipe is introduced and is proved empirically to be applicable for flow measurement. The flow profile dependence of the method is verified and found to be negligible at least in the region of moderate perturbations. The physical principles of the method were applied in practice in the form of a flowmeter with new design concepts. The developed prototype meters were verified against the reference standard of NMI (Nederlands Meetinstituut), which showed that a wide dynamic range of 1:80 is achievable with total expanded uncertainty below 0.3%. Also the requirements used for turbine meters of linearity, weighted mean error and stability were shown to be well fulfilled. A brief comparison with other flowmeter types shows the new flowmeter to be competitive. The advantages it offers are a small pressure drop over the meter, no blockage of flow in possible malfunction, no pulsation to flow, essentially no moving parts, and the possibility for bidirectional measurements. The introduced flowmeter is also capable of using the telephone network or a radio-modem to read the consumption of gas and report its operation to the user.