Use of Pipeline Wave Propagation Model for Measuring Unsteady Flow Rate

Abstract

A novel method for estimation of unsteady flow rate using pressure at two or three points along a pipeline is described in this paper. The pressure data are processed using a wave propagation model to determine the unsteady flow. The comparison and analysis of twotransducer and threetransducer techniques are investigated through simulation. The proposed method is shown to be effective for unsteady flow rate measurement over a high bandwidth. However, if the pressure values from two transducers are used, inaccuracies exist at certain frequencies when the transducer spacing coincides with multiples of half a wavelength. The accuracy can be improved by adding a third transducer with unequal spacing. The threetransducer method has been implemented in experiments and has been found to be robust and reliable.