Industrialists and instrument engineers often grapple with the challenge of measuring fluid flow in partially filled pipes, where filling the pipe entirely can involve significant mechanical alterations in the pipeline incurring substantial costs. A cost-effective and efficient solution to measure the flow rate in such scenarios is leveraging radar or ultrasonic flowmeter technology.
In this approach, the measuring device perceives the pipe as a circular channel, enabling it to compute the flow rate by assessing both the height and velocity.
In essence, various flowmeters, such as electromagnetic flange flowmeters, electromagnetic insertion flowmeters, and ultrasonic transit time or Doppler flowmeters, function as sophisticated speedometers utilizing different technologies to precisely calculate fluid speed. Multiplying the calculated velocity by the cross-sectional area of the pipe, a fixed parameter, yields the instantaneous flow rate.
However, in the radar flowmeter, the partially filled pipe’s cross-section is not assumed to be fixed in calculations. Instead, the fluid height is measured continually and multiplied by the velocity.
Q=V*A
Q: Instantaneous flow rate
V: Instantaneous fluid velocity measured by radar or ultrasonic flow meter,
A: Instantaneous fluid height measured by radar or ultrasonic sensor measuring method
