Modeling surface roughness-related uncertainties of leaky lamb wave clamp-on ultrasonic flowmeters
Author(s)
Gu, Xiaotang
Cegla, Frederic
Type
Journal Article
Abstract
Transit time clamp-on ultrasonic flowmeters (UFMs) are widely used in industry due to their ease of installation. However, these ultrasonic clamp-on flowmeters are also known to be less accurate than ultrasonic inline flowmeters because of the uncertainties induced by the installation process. Amongst the installation-related parameters that influence the measurement uncertainties, internal pipe wall roughness is one of the most significant but uncontrollable parameters. The effect of roughness on accuracy can be reduced by operating the flowmeter at a longer wavelength. This article investigates the effect of roughness on a clamp-on UFM using low-frequency (200 kHz) leaky Lamb waves. This results in operation at roughly five times lower frequency compared with conventional clamp-on UFMs. The ultrasonic signals of this leaky Lamb wave UFM were simulated using the 2-D finite-element (FE) analysis. Using the simulated signals, the roughness effects on the uncertainties were quantified. The simulation results show that the uncertainty related to pipe wall roughness of leaky Lamb wave UFMs is approximately half that of conventional UFMs for corroded pipe walls with rms value larger than 0.1 mm (0.2, 0.35, and 0.5 mm). Demonstration experiments were also carried out to detect leaky Lamb wave using an electromagnetic acoustic transducer (EMAT). The experiment shows that the simulation correctly captures all the physics of the wave propagation and that we, therefore, can trust the simulation results with incorporated roughness.
Date Issued
2020-09
Date Acceptance
2020-02-09
Citation
IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement, 2020, 69 (9), pp.6843-6852
ISSN
0018-9456
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers
Start Page
6843
End Page
6852
Journal / Book Title
IEEE Transactions on Instrumentation and Measurement
Volume
69
Issue
9
Copyright Statement
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License. For more information, see https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
License URL
Identifier
http://gateway.webofknowledge.com/gateway/Gateway.cgi?GWVersion=2&SrcApp=PARTNER_APP&SrcAuth=LinksAMR&KeyUT=WOS:000559518800090&DestLinkType=FullRecord&DestApp=ALL_WOS&UsrCustomerID=1ba7043ffcc86c417c072aa74d649202
Subjects
Acoustics
Clamp-on flowmeter
Dispersion
Engineering
Engineering, Electrical & Electronic
Instruments & Instrumentation
leaky lamb wave
Meters
roughness
Science & Technology
Steel
Surface waves
Technology
Transducers
transit time
ultrasonic
uncertainties
Uncertainty
Publication Status
Published
Date Publish Online
2020-02-20