Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2023
27th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
Evaluating Ultrasonic Flow Meter Parameters through Computational Simulation of Flows with Flow Conditioner
Submission Author:
TULIO RAFAEL PORTO , PB , Brazil
Co-Authors:
TULIO RAFAEL PORTO, Joao Alves de Lima, Tony Herbert Freire de Andrade, ANTONIO GILSON BARBOSA DE LIMA
Presenter: Joao Alves de Lima
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2023.COB2023-1435
Abstract
Accurate flow rate measurements play a major role in the control of several industrial processes and the ultrasonic flow meters have stood out as the most appropriate devices for measurements of gaseous flows, mainly due to their non-intrusive properties. These meters operate by means of internal acoustic waves in opposite directions by piezoelectric sensors, both as emitters and receivers of acoustic signals. To try to assure the measurement’s quality, sometimes unsuccessfully, these devices normally apply measurement corrections based on some characteristic flow parameters, such as asymmetry, crossflow, and swirl, which quantify the deviations from the fully developed flow pattern, to which most flow meters, including the ultrasonic ones, are usually designed and which often does not consider flow disturbances caused by bends, valves and other connections used in the industrial field. In this context, to minimize flow perturbations and therefore reduce the ultrasonic flow meter effort to correct flow variations, the present work assesses, through computational fluid dynamics (CFD), the use of flow conditioners, in order to align the flow streamlines and minimize flow meter corrections based on the above cited flow parameters. At the present research stage, the flow conditioner is positioned after two natural pipeline perturbations (two in plane 90° bends) at a specific position (5D after de last bend), and the measurements are taken at four predefined positions after the last bend: one before the flow conditioner, 2D, and three after it, 10D, 20D, 25D). According to the preliminary computational results, the application of the designed flow conditioner drastically enhanced the quality of the diagnostic flow parameters (reduction at the position 10D at most 2.8 times of the asymmetry deviation (from -13% to -4.5%), at most 2.7 times of the crossflow deviation (from -3.2% to -1.2%), and at most 22.5 times of the swirl deviation (from -7.7% to -0.34%), reducing, therefore, the requirement of ultrasonic flow meter measurement corrections.
Keywords
Ultrasonic flow meters, flow conditioners, asymmetry, crossflow, swirl
