Measurement and Calibration of Thermal Cross-correlation-based Flowmeter Operating in Harsh Environment

Authors

Taleb Moazzeni, University of Nevada Las VegasFollow
Jian Ma, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow
Yingtao Jiang, University of Nevada, Las VegasFollow

Document Type

Article

Publication Date

5-6-2013

Publication Title

IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement

Volume

62

Issue

8

First page number:

2280

Last page number:

2285

Abstract

In the harsh environment present in nuclear reactors, due to degradation caused by corrosion and/or erosion, the available nonintrusive flow rate measurement devices are capable of working only for a short period of time. The transit-time-based flowmeter using thermocouples (TC) with grounded stainless steel shielding is by far the most robust and reliable solution to this problem. This method suffers from a few signal processing problems, such as flat peak plateau or multiple peaks that result in wrong transit-time estimation. We have previously introduced a signal processing technique to correct the transit time estimation. However, as we conducted experiments, the calculated flowrates using the estimated transit-time are not in good agreement with readings from a standard flowmeter. To adjust the calculated flow, in this paper, we apply a regression method through the calibration process with measurements obtained from a standard flowmeter using an in-house developed apparatus. We observe a nearly linear relationship between the readings from the standard flowmeter and those from our flowmeter for flowrates ranging from 0.5-3 gpm (gallon per minute). The calibration results are quite consistent across different experiment scenarios.

Keywords

Calibration; Data acquisition; Delay estimation; Fluid flow measurement; Temperature measurement

Disciplines

Applied Mechanics | Controls and Control Theory | Electrical and Computer Engineering | Electro-Mechanical Systems | Manufacturing | Mechanical Engineering | Systems and Communications

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. (2013). Measurement and Calibration of Thermal Cross-correlation-based Flowmeter Operating in Harsh Environment. IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 62(8), 2280-2285.