Research article

Analysis of metrological characteristics of elbow flowmeter under rotating state

¹ Institute of Electrical Engineering of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100190, China
² University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing 100049, China
³ Dongfang Electric Machinery Co., Ltd, Deyang, Sichuan 618000, China

^* Corresponding author: rosaline@mail.iee.ac.cn

Received: 31 March 2021
Accepted: 23 August 2021

Abstract

The application of elbow flowmeter in rotary equipments is beneficial to reduce the pipeline complexity. However, the intervention of centrifugal acceleration will lead to the change of metrological characteristics of elbow flowmeter. Based on the analysis of the differential pressure formation mechanism of the environmental acceleration on the elbow flowmeter, the calculation formula of the flow rate measurement with the elbow flowmeter in the rotating state is derived, and the fitting method of the discharge coefficient is put forward. The CFD method was used to analyze the internal flow field of the elbow flowmeter under rotating state, summarize the pressure distribution characteristics of the pipe wall, and verify the feasibility of the discharge coefficient fitting strategy by simulation. The results show that for the elbow flowmeters with diameters of 10 mm and 15 mm and the radius to diameter ratio of 1.5, as long as the water flow rate is between 1.5 m/s and 5 m/s, the measurement accuracy can be guaranteed to be above 4%.