Multi-wave ultrasonic Doppler method for measuring high flow-rates using staggered pulse intervals

The ultrasonic pulsed Doppler method (UDM) can obtain a velocity profile along the path of an ultrasonic beam. However, the UDM measurement volume is relatively large and it is known that the measurement volume affects the measurement accuracy. In this study, the effect of the measurement volume on velocity and flow rate measurements is analytically and experimentally evaluated. The velocities measured using UDM are considered to be ensemble-averaged values over the measurement volume in order to analyze the velocity error due to the measurement volume, while the flow rates are calculated from the integration of the velocity profile across the pipe. The analytical results show that the channel width, i.e. the spatial resolution along the ultrasonic beam axis, rather than the ultrasonic beam diameter, strongly influences the flow rate measurement. To improve the accuracy of the flow rate, a novel method using a multi-wave ultrasonic transducer consisting of two piezo-electric elements with different basic frequencies is proposed to minimize the size of the measurement volume in the near-wall region of a pipe flow. The velocity profiles in the near-wall region are measured using an 8 MHz sensor with a small diameter, while those far from the transducer are measured using a hollow 2 MHz sensor in the multi-wave transducer. The applicability of the multi-wave transducer was experimentally investigated using the water flow-rate calibration facility at the National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology (AIST). As a result, the errors in the flow rate were found to be below −1%, while the multi-wave method is shown to be particularly effective for measuring higher flow rates in a large-diameter pipe.