Note: Ultrasonic liquid flow meter for small pipes.

An ultrasonic flow meter for small pipes is presented. For metal pipe diameter smaller than 10 mm, clamp-on ultrasonic contrapropagation flow meters may encounter difficulties if cross talk or the short acoustic path contributes to large uncertainty in transit time measurement. Axial inline flow meters can avoid these problems, but they may introduce other problems if the transducer port is not properly positioned. Three types of pipe connecting tees are compared using the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) method. CFD shows the 45° tee has more uniform velocity distribution over the measuring section. A prototype flow meter using the 45° tee was designed and tested. The zero flow experiment shows the flow meter has a maximum of 0.002 m∕s shift over 24 h. The flow meter is calibrated by only 1 meter factor. After calibration, inaccuracy lower than 0.1% of reading was achieved in the laboratory, for a measuring range from 15 to 150 g∕s (0.29 to 2.99 m∕s; Re = 2688 to 26,876).