(Ultrasonic) Flow sensors.

Nron_9

If you have any info on the flow meter I would like to have get it it might work well with an idea i have and would like to try

Nick W

(Ultrasonic) Flow sensors.

Have any of you used one? Are they worth the price? How does it work?

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Dave_13

Ultrasonics

Are you talking about an ultrasonic flowmeter in a closed pipe??? Ultrasonics work best in dirty water. They "bounce" a ultrasonic wave off the particulate in the water and use this along with other parameters to calculate flow.

Constantin

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Here is how the time-delay version of ultrasonic flow meters work. In this implementation, they measure the speed of propagation between two transducers, then calculate the effect that fluid movement had. Combine that with a known inner diameter that the fluid flows through and you can calculate the mass-transfer.

The folks at CISRO, certainly seem convinced that their patent-pending ultra-sonic implementation is the bees knees. Looking at the design, it's certainly pretty though all those precision shapes and curved surfaces make me wonder if it can be mass-produced inexpensively for applications like water meters.

For a less-costly and less precise implementation, look no further than the wares from Flowmeters.com. At least their transducer and detector do not have to be housed in a custom-cast enclosure but can be clamped onto pipes. I doubt this would be good enough for residential water metering.

If there are enough impurities in the water, you can use the doppler effect instead to measure flow. Impurities, bubbles, and other things suspended in water will cause a reflection whose movement can be logged. Integrate that over the area of the pipe and you'll have mass-transfer once more.

Some ultrasonic transducers on boats are now used as depth sounder and as a speed measurement device. While allegedly not as accurate as the paddle-wheel technology they replace, ultrasonic transducers can be flat on the hull and do not have the tendency to foul the way that paddle-wheel transducers do. In fact, some ultrasonic transducers do not even require a hole in the boat hull, they fire right through the hull from the inside.