The Resulting Effect of Flow Pulsations on Calibration Constant of Acoustic Path in Ultrasonic Flowmeters

The present paper compares, for the first time, the regimes of a pulsating turbulent flow in a smooth pipe in terms of 0.001 ≤ ω(+) ≤ 0.0346 and 0.16 ≤ β ≤ 0.63 at Re ≈ 7000 with the uncertainty in estimating the flow rate by an ultrasonic flowmeter. It was revealed that the classification of pulsating flow regimes according to the dimensionless angular frequency ω(+) does not have a direct relation with the K parameter equal to the ratio of the phase-average calibration constant in pulsating flow to the corresponding value in steady flow. The results of data processing showed that K depends on the relative amplitude of pulsations β and the position of the chord of the ultrasonic beam trajectory (L/R is distance L from the pipe center to the chord to the pipe radius R). In the coordinates β and L/R, there is a rather wide area where the uncertainty in flow rate estimation of pulsating flows should not exceed 0.5%. An increase in β or L/R leads to an increase in measurement uncertainty, which in the limiting case β, L/R → 1 can reach 5% or more. Favorable and unfavorable areas of the pipe section were identified when scanning pulsating flows and the effectiveness of using multi-path scanning schemes was estimated to reduce the resulting effect of flow pulsations on flow measurement uncertainty.