差压式涡街质量流量计取压位置的研究

在涡街流量计中，流体通过涡街发生体后会产生压力损失及由旋涡引起的压力波动，根据这一特点，本文提出利用差压检测技术，通过单路差压传感器同时感受由涡街发生体引起的流体双重变化特性，测量流体质量流量的新方法。本文重点对差压检测取压位置进行研究，利用空气和水两种流体介质进行了一系列实验，得到不同取压位置的差压信号与流量关系，确定了能正确测量质量流量的差压取压位置。结果表明，该测量方法结构简单，是测量质量流量的有效方法。     

Mass flowmeter detecting fluctuations in lift generated by vortex shedding

Indirect measurement of mass flow rate has been widely used, combining volumetric flowmeters with the temperature and/or pressure compensation of fluid density. However, this approach has disadvantages, such as a complicated compensating algorithm, and is only applicable to ideal gases, except for highly pressurized and other gases. A flowmeter for direct measurement of mass flow is more suitable for overcoming the disadvantages of indirect measurement. The authors propose one approach to direct measurement using a vortex flowmeter. That is, Karman vortices are generated by a vortex shedder, and fluctuations in the lift and their frequency are detected by stress sensors built into the vortex shedder. The amount of lift is divided by the frequency to yield signals proportional to the mass flow rate. The proposed approach to sensing features simplicity both in principle and in sensor construction. Satisfactory results are obtained from applying this approach to water, air and other gases.     

A T-shaped vortex shedder for a vortex flow-meter

A configuration of a T-shaped vortex shedder is developed with the goal of improving the quality of the vortex shedding signal measured. This T-shaped vortex shedder comprises a trapezoidal cylinder which is fixed in shape and an extended plate attached behind whose length is variable. The vortex shedding frequency is deduced from the differential pressure signal measured, which corresponds to the pressure difference resulting from the two sides of the trapezoidal cylinder. By varying the length of the extended plate, the optimal situation is found to be when the length of the extended plate falls in the range of 1.56 to 2.0 times the width of the vortex shedder, when the low-frequency variations embedded in the pressure signal are significantly suppressed.     

Performance evaluation of piezoelectric and differential pressure sensor for vortex flowmeters

Piezoelectric and transient differential pressure sensors are two among the most widely employed sensors for vortex flowmeter application. The present study evaluates the performance of these two techniques under fully developed and disturbed flow conditions. Firstly, the location of the transient differential pressure sensor is optimized to obtain high amplitude signals and good linearity in Strouhal number. Empirical mode decomposition method in combination with autocorrelation decay is successfully employed at high Reynolds numbers to identify the vortex shedding frequency in presence of hydrodynamic noise. The performance of the differential pressure sensor deteriorates significantly under disturbed flow conditions at low Reynolds number due to the presence of low frequency components. This deterioration in the signal quality limits the lower operating range of the flowmeter with differential pressure sensor. The output signals of the piezoelectric sensor and differential pressure sensor under no flow condition are compared to obtain the background noise due to piping vibrations and electrical interferences. These results will help a designer to suggest robust signal processing algorithms for vortex frequency detection.     

Novel liquid flow sensor based on differential pressure method

In this article, a novel liquid flow sensor which is composed of a special structure conduit main body and a differential pressure sensor was designed, fabricated, and calibrated. The conduit main body includes an inlet channel section with a branch conduit connecting one end of the pressure sensor, a throat channel section, and an outlet channel section with a branch conduit connecting another end of the pressure sensor. The basic principle is to employ a differential pressure sensor to measure the pressure difference between the inlet channel and outlet channel of the conduit main body when fluid passes through it. The pressure difference between the two ends of the differential pressure sensor (i.e., the two branch conduits located in the inlet and outlet channel sections) is of either forward or backward flow and directly interrelates with the volume flow rate (mass flow rate or flow velocity) via the conduit main body, so the volume flow rate or mass flow rate or flow velocity can be calculated and the flow direction can be determined from the detected pressure difference. This liquid flow sensor is characterized by using only one differential pressure sensor of a simple structure, the error of which is less than 1%.     

A new approach to detection of vortices using ultrasound

The measurement principle of vortex flowmeter is based on von Karman vortex shedding phenomenon. Frequency of vortices, behind the bluff body, is proportional to the mean flow velocity. There are different ways of detection of vortices, and different sensors are used (presser sensors, capacitive sensors, thermo-resistance sensors, ultrasonic sensors, etc.). Proposed method to vortex identification, presented in this paper is based on simultaneous detection of pair of vortices with opposite circulation, by means of two pairs of ultrasonic transducers. A beam of ultrasound, from ultrasonic transmitter to ultrasonic receiver is transmitted perpendicularly to the vortex street. The received ultrasonic signal is amplitude and phase modulated. Frequency of demodulated signal is equal to the frequency of vortices. This technique allows a number of advantages comparing to conventional solutions: reduction, or elimination of noises caused by installation vibration and disturbances in the flow, higher sensor sensitivity, which as a result leads to a possibility of a reduction of the bluff body size, i.e. reduction of the pressure drop on the flow meter, increase of the measurement range in the low flow region, the possibility of redundant operation of the flow meter, reduced measurement uncertainty, instrument technology improvements, improved reliability of the instrument, assured improved statement of complete uncertainty contributions, improved metrology of the equipment as such and calibration procedures that contribute to measuring capabilities etc. For experimental testing a prototype vortex flowmeter of a nominal inner diameter (ID) 50 mm is developed. A cylindrical bluff body for vortex shedding is used. Ultrasonic transducers based on piezo-crystal PZT-5A, inserted in the wall of the vortex meter casing are utilized. The testing of prototype ultrasonic vortex flowmeter is realized on the calibration station on the water. The results at the testing point to the possibility of measuring flow of liquid fluids at velocities less than 0.5 m/s, with an uncertainty better than ±1%.     

Note: anti-strong-disturbance signal processing method of vortex flowmeter with two sensors

Some digital signal processing methods have been used to deal with the output signal of vortex flowmeter for extracting the flow rate frequency from the noisy output of vortex flow rate sensor and achieving the measurement of small flow rate. In applications, however, the power of noise is larger than that of flow rate sometimes. These strong disturbances are caused by pipe vibration mostly. Under this condition the previous digital signal processing methods will be unavailable. Therefore, an anti-strong-disturbance solution is studied for the vortex flowmeter with two sensors in this Note. In this solution, two piezoelectric sensors are installed in the vortex probe. One is called the flow rate sensor for measuring both the flow rate and vibration noise, and the other is called the vibration sensor for detecting the vibration noise and sensing the flow rate signal weakly at the same time. An anti-strong-disturbance signal processing method combining the frequency-domain substation algorithm with the frequency-variance calculation algorithm is proposed to identify the flow rate frequency. When the peak number of amplitude spectrum of the flow rate sensor is different from that of the vibration sensor, the frequency-domain subtraction algorithm will be adopted; when the peak number of amplitude spectrum of the flow rate sensor is the same as that of the vibration sensor, the frequency-variance calculation algorithm will be employed. The whole algorithm is implemented in real time by an ultralow power micro control unit (MCU) to meet requirements of process instrumentation. The experimental results show that this method can obtain the flow rate frequency correctly even if the power of the pipe vibration noise is larger than that of the vortex flow rate signal.     

液固两相流压降规律及超声法压降测量

液固两相流广泛存在于能源动力、石油化工等工业过程,两相流压降作为重要的流动参数,有助于流动建模及流态分析。建立液固两相压降测量模型,提出了一种结合超声多普勒及超声透射衰减的液固两相超声压降测量方法。搭建液固两相流动实验平台,对两相压降规律进行研究。两相混合流速和固相体积分数升高时,液固两相压降均逐渐增加。在固相体积分数为0.28%～1.37%,两相混合流速为0.9～1.65 m/s时,根据液固两相压降测量模型及Churchill模型的超声法得到的两相压降与差压传感器测量的压降平均相对误差为4.93%和5.10%,验证了测量模型的准确性。针对非均匀分布的两相流态进行压降测量,进一步拓展了压降测量模型的应用范围。本研究工作为非侵入超声法测量液固两相压降提供了方法基础。     

Influence of blockage and shape of a bluff body on the performance of vortex flowmeter with wall pressure measurement

Experimental and numerical investigations are carried out with various bluff body shapes to identify an appropriate shape which can be used for vortex flowmeter application. In both the cases vortex shedding frequency is inferred from the fluctuation of wall pressure. The numerical simulations are carried out with cylindrical and triangular bluff bodies to understand the vortex shedding phenomenon and to identify an appropriate turbulence model for this class of flows with wall pressure measurement. The simulations reveal that the k-ε RNG model predicts the Strouhal number closer to the experimental results than other models. The experimental investigations are carried out with several bluff body shapes, such as triangular, trapezoidal, conical, cylindrical and ring shapes, with water as the working medium. In this context, the effects of sampling rate, tap location and blockage effects are explored. The results suggest that the axisymmetric tapping is better than differential pressure tapping in terms of signal amplitude. The non-dimensional location of the static pressure tap is found to be 0.714 times diameter of pipe times blockage. The trapezoidal bluff body is found to be the best among all the bluff bodies investigated in terms of signal amplitude and constancy of Strouhal number. The vortex flowmeter performance is also measured under disturbed flow conditions created by using gate valve and bends. These results are significant because they provide an optimum bluff body shape and blockage, and also present the performance of vortex flow meter under disturbed flow conditions which is rather seldom reported in the literature.     

Response of a vortex flowmeter to impulsive vibrations

Experiments were performed to study the response of a vortex flowmeter to structural vibrations due to impulsive forces applied on the pipe. Vortex-shedding signals obtained by a piezoelectric sensor embedded in a vortex shedder were examined. Major findings are described as follows. First, by improving the design of the piezoelectric sensor, the sensor sensitivity to structural vibrations could be reduced. Specifically speaking, the noise component due to impulsive force with level up to 13.8 kN could be removed effectively from the output. Second, by applying repetitive impulsive forces on the pipe, characterized by a frequency greater than the vortex-shedding frequency, the quality of vortex-shedding signals measured was degraded substantially. This is explained as being due to suppression of vortex shedding, not a problem in conjunction with the characteristics of the sensor.     

Pressure field estimation from ultrasound Doppler velocity profiler for vortex-shedding flows

A novel algorithm of pressure field estimation based on ultrasound velocity profiler (UVP) is developed. The method consists of UVP measurement of velocity distribution in fluid flows and numerical analysis of the measured data using fluid dynamics equations. We introduce equation of continuity, incompressible Navier-Stokes equation and proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) into the basic algorithm, so that pressure field of space-time two-dimensional unsteady fluid flow is fully reconstructed. Since UVP is based on ultrasound Doppler principle, the local instantaneous pressure distribution is obtained non-intrusively. The performance of an algorithm is evaluated for vortex shedding flow behind a circular cylinder at Re = 1000. Considering the specification of UVP, the optimal method of experimental data conversion to pressure information is proposed. We have found that the one-dimensional velocity measurement by UVP upon Taylor's frozen hypothesis is suitable for evaluation of pressure field in wake of the cylinder. The present algorithm is also demonstrated for opaque fluid flows by considering vortex flow in milk.     

流致振动差压式测振装置的研究

为解决管束流致振动试验中,现有接触式振动测量方法的应用局限性,提出一种基于测量受激对象换热管两侧压差脉动频率原理的测振装置,即差压式测振装置。差压式测振装置解决了传统接触式传感器对换热管外部流场的干扰问题以及安装空间受限的问题。为了验证差压式测振装置的有效性,分别进行了单管和换热管束两类流致振动测试试验。试验结果表明,差压式测振装置能在复杂的流动环境中准确捕捉到换热管受到的各类激振形式的频率,而且单管流致振动试验结果表明差压式测振装置所测得的周期性涡激振动频率与理论值偏差在5%以内。因此,差压式测振装置的研制与应用对于流致振动试验的测试以及换热管振动的长期监测均有很重要的意义。     

涡街流量传感器动态压力场分布特性

利用数值计算的方法,实现对涡街流量传感器中压力场动态分布特性的研究。数值计算采用湍流理论中的k- 模型并结合CFD技术进行,以SIMPLE算法解离散控制方程。数值计算得到的旋涡脱落频率与试验结果相近,误差不超过7%,证明数值计算方法的有效性,并在此基础上通过对涡街流场中压力场分布特点的分析,给出检测旋涡信号的最佳区域。从分析旋涡在流场中动态变化过程入手,深入探讨引发压力场变化规律的流场内部机理。     

涡街流量计数字信号处理方法

涡街流量计是最近发展起来的一种新型流量计，其传感器输出信号的频率与流体的流速成正比，经过计算可以测量积流量。由于管道的机械振动和流场的不稳定等因素，使得传感器输出信号中含有各种噪声，本文归纳了几种通过数字信号处理测量频率的方法，其中小波变换方法具有较好的应用前景。     

Experimental verification and numerical simulation of a vortex flowmeter at low Reynolds numbers

This study presents experimental verification and numerical simulations of a vortex flow meter in the Reynolds number range between 8300 and 50,000. A custom-designed bluff body with a wedge back shape was used in the flowmeter. A shedding frequency of the flowmeter was measured in an air duct using a hot-film probe. To evaluate the accuracy of the flowmeter, a measurement uncertainty analysis was performed. Numerical simulations of the vortex flowmeter were performed with the open source code OpenFOAM. Transient simulations of periodic vortex shedding behind the bluff body were performed using different simulation methods depending on the pipe Reynolds number, such as Direct Numerical Simulation (DNS), Large Eddy Simulation (LES) and Unsteady Reynolds Averaged Navier Stokes (URANS) method. The simulated vortex shedding frequencies matched the experimental data very well. Experiments and simulations demonstrated a clear linear dependence of the shedding frequency on the volumetric flow rate over the entire range of Reynolds numbers. In addition, numerical simulations were used to study the main mechanisms of vortex formation and shedding behind the considered bluff body.     

Non-disruptive and null-deflection mass flow measurement by a pressure compensation technique

Accurate mass flow measurement is very important in various monitoring and control applications. This paper proposes a novel method of fluid flow measurement by compensating the pressure drop across the ends of measuring unit using a compensating pump. The pressure drop due to the flow is balanced by a feedback control loop. This is a null-deflection type of measurement. As the insertion of such a measuring unit does not affect the functioning of the systems, this is also a non-disruptive flow measurement method. The implementation and design of such a unit are discussed. The system is modeled and simulated using the bond graph technique and it is experimentally validated.     

Evolution of an improved vortex generator

This paper reviews the process, stretching over several years and with contributions from several workers, by which an improved body shape for use in vortex shedding meters was designed and tested. A priori knowledge of the fluid mechanics involved in vortex shedding, supplemented by information obtained from observation (flow visualization) and measurement (spectral analysis), was used to direct the design process. Particular attention was focused on stabilizing the vortex sheddind so that signal dropout and unnecessary limitations to the operating range could be attacked at their source. After examination of the performance of a number of different cylinder cross-sections, and experiments involving splitters and afterbodies, a detailed study of a generator consisting of a circular cylinder split across its lateral diameter was undertaken. Subsequently, it was found that the performance of this (already good) generator could be improved still further by shaping the rear surface of the cylinder. The split cylinder with concave rear surface resulting from this design process was shown to provide the strongest and most regular vortex shedding of all the shapes tested. Moreover, the performance benefits of this shape can now be explained in terms of the flow structure in the near wake.     

核能海水淡化源蒸汽质量流量的测量与新的密度补偿式

本采用汽液两相流均相流动的模型,分析了涡街流量计在核能海水淡化源汽的捏流量测量中的适用性,并结合低压和蒸汽的热物理性质,论述了涡街流量计测量低压饱和蒸汽质量流量的误差一蒸汽干度之间关系。给出了一个用于低压饱和蒸汽质量流量测量的变系数密度补偿式和该补偿式的特色。     

Air–water two-phase flow measurement using a Venturi meter and an electrical resistance tomography sensor

A method for air–water two-phase flow measurement is proposed using a Venturi meter combined with an Electrical Resistance Tomography (ERT) sensor. Firstly, the real-time flow pattern of the two-phase flow is identified using the ERT sensor. Secondly, the void fraction of the two-phase flow is calculated from the conductance values through a void fraction measurement model, developed using the LS-SVM regression method. Thirdly, the mass quality is determined from the void fraction through void fraction-quality correlation. And finally, the mass flowrate of the two-phase flow is calculated from the mass quality and the differential pressure across the Venturi meter. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed method is effective for the measurement of the mass flowrate of air–water flow. The proposed method introduces the flow pattern information in the measurement process, which minimizes the influence of flow pattern on the conventional differential pressure based methods. In addition, the mass quality is calculated from the void fraction, so the difficulty to obtain the mass quality in conventional methods is also overcome. Meanwhile, the new method is capable for providing concurrent measurements of multiple parameters of the two-phase flow including void fraction, mass quality and mass flowrate as well as an indication of the flow pattern.     

A system for time-fluctuating flow rate measurements in a single-blade pump circuit

Commonly used flow rate measurement systems provide an accurate and stable output value of the quasi-stationary flow rate. In some pump types as e.g. single-blade pumps significant flow rate fluctuations may occur even in steady operation points due to rotor-stator interaction. For the analysis of the time-resolved flow rate a new measurement and evaluation method is presented based on an electromagnetic flow meter. Internal averaging of the flow meter is deactivated and the raw signal is evaluated directly with a sampling rate of 3 kHz. With ensemble-averaging in combination with an impeller position detection, interfering signals acting on the time-resolved measurement signal are filtered out. Accompanying numerical simulations of the pump flow circuit are carried out with a 1D method of characteristics and validated against well-established time-resolved pressure measurements of the pump flow. Experiment and simulation show a resembling trend of pressure as well as flow rate fluctuations over the entire operation range of the pump. Thus, by the combined utilisation of measurement and simulation technique, we assure the validity of the ensemble-averaged flow rate fluctuation results. We find that the flow rate fluctuations show a consistent phase shift to the pressure fluctuations that increases towards overload. The flow rate amplitude is an order of magnitude smaller than the amplitude of the pressure fluctuations.