Flow Rate Measurement in a High-temperature, Radioactive, and Corrosive Environment

Authors

Taleb Moazzeni, University of Nevada Las VegasFollow
Jian Ma, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow
Yingtao Jiang, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow
Ning Li, Los Alamos National LaboratoryFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

3-17-2011

Publication Title

IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement

Volume

60

Issue

6

First page number:

2062

Last page number:

2069

Abstract

The transit time of a thermal signal traveling along with a liquid flow can be obtained using a cross-correlation method. This transit-time-based flowmeter using thermocouples with grounded stainless steel shielding is by far the most robust and reliable solution to measure the flow rate in a harsh environment of high temperature, irradiation, and corrosion, typically seen in a nuclear reactor. In practice, cross-correlation calculation tends to produce flat peak plateau or multiple peaks, leading to a significant error in peak detection. To overcome this problem, in this paper, an autoadaptive impulse response function (AAIRF) estimation technique is thus introduced, and a significantly narrower peak is shown theoretically and also verified experimentally. In addition, we show that more accurate results can be obtained if a moving-average-filter-based cross-correlation function is combined with AAIRF. In this paper, we also investigate a few important practical problems related to negative delays and sampling frequencies of the data acquisition.

Keywords

Bandwidth; Correlation; Delay; Delay effects; Estimation; Temperature measurement; Temperature sensors

Disciplines

Controls and Control Theory | Electrical and Computer Engineering | Electrical and Electronics | Electronic Devices and Semiconductor Manufacturing | Energy Systems | Heat Transfer, Combustion | Mechanical Engineering | Power and Energy

Language

English

Permissions

Use Find in Your Library, contact the author, or interlibrary loan to garner a copy of the item. Publisher policy does not allow archiving the final published version. If a post-print (author's peer-reviewed manuscript) is allowed and available, or publisher policy changes, the item will be deposited.

Repository Citation

Moazzeni, T., Ma, J., Jiang, Y., Li, N. (2011). Flow Rate Measurement in a High-temperature, Radioactive, and Corrosive Environment. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 60(6), 2062-2069.