Application of empirical mode decomposition based energy ratio to vortex flowmeter state diagnosis

To improve the measurement performance, a method for diagnosing the state of vortex flowmeter under various flow conditions was presented. The raw sensor signal of the vortex flowmeter was adaptively decomposed into intrinsic mode functions using the empirical mode decomposition approach. Based on the empirical mode decomposition results, the energy of each intrinsic mode function was extracted, and the vortex energy ratio was proposed to analyze how the perturbation in the flow affected the measurement performance of the vortex flowmeter. The relationship between the vortex energy ratio of the signal and the flow condition was established. The results show that the vortex energy ratio is sensitive to the flow condition and ideal for the characterization of the vortex flowmeter signal. Moreover, the vortex energy ratio under normal flow condition is greater than 80%, which can be adopted as an indicator to diagnose the state of a vortex flowmeter.

Application of Hilbert-Huang transform to denoising in vortex flowmeter

Due to piping vibration, fluid pulsation and other environmental disturbances, variations of amplitude and frequency to the raw signals of vortex flowmeter are imposed. It is difficult to extract vortex frequencies which indicate volumetric flowrate from noisy data, especially at low flowrates. Hilbert-Huang transform was adopted to estimate vortex frequency. The noisy raw signal was decomposed into different intrinsic modes by empirical mode decomposition, the time-frequency characteristics of each mode were analyzed, and the vortex frequency was obtained by calculating partial mode’s instantaneous frequency. Experimental results show that the proposed method can estimate the vortex frequency with less than 2% relative error; and in the low flowrate range studied, the denoising ability of Hilbert-Huang transform is markedly better than Fourier based algorithms. These findings reveal that this method is accurate for vortex signal processing and at the same time has strong anti-disturbance ability.

Influence of bluff body shape on wall pressure distribution in vortex flowmeter

To investigate the influence of bluff body shape on wall pressure distribution in a vortex flowmeter,experiments were conducted on a specially designed test section in a closed water rig at Reynolds numbers of 6.2×10 4-9.3×10 4.The cross sections of the bluff bodies were semicircular,square,and triangular shaped,and there were totally 21 pressure tappings along the conduit to acquire the wall pressures.It is found that the variation trends of wall pressures are basically identical regardless of the bluff body shapes.The wall pressures begin to diverge from 0.3D(D is the inner diameter of the vortex flowmeter) in front of the bluff body due to the diversity in shape,and all reach the minimum values at 0.3D behind the bluff body.A discrepancy between the triangular or square cylinder and the semicircular cylinder in wall pressure change is observed at 0-0.1D behind the bluff body.It is also found that the wall pressures and irrecoverable pressure loss coefficients increase with flow rates,and the triangular cylinder causes the smallest irrecoverable pressure loss at a fixed flow rate.

INVESTIGATION OF VORTEX SHEDDING INDUCED HYDRODYNAMIC VIBRATION IN VORTEX STREET FLOWMETER

Vortex street flowmeter has been used in steady flow measurement for about three decades The benefits of this type of flowmeter include high accuracy,good linearty,wide measuring range,and excellent reliability However,in unsteady flow measurement,the pressure disturbance as well as the noise from the system or surrounding can reduce the signal to noise ratio of the flowmeter seriously Aimed to use vortex street flowmeters in unsteady flow measurement,the characteristics of the vortex shedding induced hydrodynamic vibration around the prism bluff body in a vortex street flowmeter are investigated numerically and by expriments The results show that the hydrodynamic vibrations with 180° phase shift occur at the axisymmetric points of the channel around the bluff body The most intense vibration occurs at the points on the lateral faces close to the base of the prism The results provide therefore a useful reference for developing an anti interference vortex flowmeter using the different ial sensing technique.