Ultrasonic transit time flow meter for diesel: initial analysis

Abstract

Transport control and tracking systems allow to track the car position and other requested parameters (fuel consumption, speed, temperature etc.) over GSM networks. It is desirable to have ability to monitor the diesel fuel consumption using ultrasonic flow meter. It was suggested to use the transit time ultrasonic flow meter with beam and flow axes matched instead of conventional inclined ultrasound channel. The initial study carried out to estimate the feasibility of such device design is presented.
Numerical experiments have been carried when estimation of the time of flight was accomplished using the direct correlation method combined with parabolic sub-sample interpolation. Signal energy, operation frequency and bandwidth, electronics noise, analog to digit converter (ADC) sampling speed and resolution were taken into account.
System prototype has been designed for experimental investigation. System contains pulser, reception amplifiers, dual channel ADC with buffer memory and USB communication unit. Experiments with and without ultrasonic channel were carried out. It was concluded that under zero flow condition the transit time difference has 2,4 ps standard deviation and -0,29 ps average; virtual flow obtained has 0.4 ^.10^-4 m/s standard deviation and 0.5 ^.10^-5 m/s mean.