Journal
FLOW MEASUREMENT AND INSTRUMENTATION
Volume 17, Issue 1, Pages 29-38Publisher
ELSEVIER SCI LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.flowmeasinst.2005.08.002
Keywords
vortex shedding; mass flow rate; differential pressure
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Mass flow rate measurement is very important in the majority of industry processes because the mass of fluid is not affected by ambient temperature and pressure as the volume will be. Conventional mass flow rate is normally derived from the volumetric flow rate multiplied by fluid density. The density can be obtained by a densitometer or calculated according to the temperature and pressure measured by a thermometer and pressure gauge respectively. However the measurement accuracy is not always satisfactory. Flowmeters directly measuring mass flow rate have been studied and developed recently, such as Coriolis and thermal flowmeters. Unfortunately they still have some limits in practical applications. A new method in which mass flow rate can be directly measured based on the vortex shedding principle is presented in this paper. As a vortex flowmeter, von Karman vortex shedding is generated by a bluff body (vortex shedder), leading to a pressure drop and pressure fluctuation. A single differential pressure sensor is employed to detect the pressure difference between upstream and downstream sides of the vortex shedder. Both vortex shedding frequency and pressure drop are contained from the output signal of the differential pressure sensor, so that the mass flow rate can be obtained from the pressure signal. Numerical simulation has been done to analyze the characteristics of the fluid field and design the measurement device. The Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes Fluent were used in the numerical simulation. Experiments were carried out with water and gas, and the results show that this method is feasible and effective to measure the mass flow rate. This method has also robustness to disturbances such as pipe vibration and fluid turbulence. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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