Turbulent flow in small-diameter ultrasonic flow meters: A numerical and experimental study

TY - JOUR

T1 - Turbulent flow in small-diameter ultrasonic flow meters: A numerical and experimental study

AU - Rincón, Mario Javier

AU - Reclari, Martino

AU - Abkar, Mahdi

PY - 2022/10

Y1 - 2022/10

N2 - Small-diameter ultrasonic flow meters present an interesting industrial internal-flow problem due to their unique geometry and complex interaction with fluid flow. In order to efficiently evaluate and optimise these flow meters, their flow physics must be accurately understood and predicted. In this study, computational fluid dynamics is used to predict the turbulent flow inside a residential ultrasonic flow meter with an intrusive two-stand configuration. Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS), with k−ɛ and k−ω SST turbulence models, are evaluated in a wall-modelled and a wall-resolved grid. The simulation results are compared against laser Doppler velocimetry, pressure drop, and vortices visualisation experiments in both qualitative and quantitative manners. Numerical results qualitatively agree with experimental data although some discrepancies are predicted by the k−ɛ model. Overall, the results that best predict the flow structures, axial velocity, and pressure drop are achieved by wall-resolved RANS k−ω SST model. While minor differences are predicted by the wall-modelled k−ω SST, it is concluded that this approach is a good candidate to perform time-efficient studies due to the reduced computational cost.

AB - Small-diameter ultrasonic flow meters present an interesting industrial internal-flow problem due to their unique geometry and complex interaction with fluid flow. In order to efficiently evaluate and optimise these flow meters, their flow physics must be accurately understood and predicted. In this study, computational fluid dynamics is used to predict the turbulent flow inside a residential ultrasonic flow meter with an intrusive two-stand configuration. Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS), with k−ɛ and k−ω SST turbulence models, are evaluated in a wall-modelled and a wall-resolved grid. The simulation results are compared against laser Doppler velocimetry, pressure drop, and vortices visualisation experiments in both qualitative and quantitative manners. Numerical results qualitatively agree with experimental data although some discrepancies are predicted by the k−ɛ model. Overall, the results that best predict the flow structures, axial velocity, and pressure drop are achieved by wall-resolved RANS k−ω SST model. While minor differences are predicted by the wall-modelled k−ω SST, it is concluded that this approach is a good candidate to perform time-efficient studies due to the reduced computational cost.

KW - Laser Doppler Velocimetry

KW - Numerical modelling

KW - OpenFOAM

KW - Turbulent flow

KW - Ultrasonic flow meter

U2 - 10.1016/j.flowmeasinst.2022.102227

DO - 10.1016/j.flowmeasinst.2022.102227

M3 - Journal article

SN - 0955-5986

VL - 87

JO - Flow Measurement and Instrumentation

JF - Flow Measurement and Instrumentation

M1 - 102227

ER -