Three-dimensional simulation study of liquid turbine flow sensor

With the turbine flow sensor applications increasingly widespread, the requirements of the turbine flow sensor accuracy are also higher. In this paper, the simulation model was built in strict accordance with the experimental 15 mm diameter turbine flow sensor´s geometric structure with careful grid resolutions. Five kinds of turbulence models, including standard k-ω, SST k ω, RNG k-ε, Realizable k-ε and RSM, were used in three dimensional simulation of 15 mm diameter liquid turbine flow sensor and compared with the experimental data. The results showed that the relative error of the average meter factor between simulation and experimental results can reach 2.6% level. RNG k-ε and RSM model can more exactly predict the sensor´s linearity. Standard k-ω can be more exact for the prediction of the meter factor of the sensor. The friction torque between the shaft and bearings obtained by theoretical formula has little effect on the turbine flow sensor simulation accuracy.