Dynamic quality evaluation of elbow flowmeter

In order to assess the dynamic quality of the elbow flowmeter, the influence of ambient temperature, inner-pipe medium temperature, and pipeline lengths of the front and rear straight sections on the geometrical shape of the elbow pipe was presented in the paper. The change rule of the curvature radius to inside diameter ratio (R/D) and the quality index in various operating conditions were acquired quantitatively. The significance of the dynamic quality evaluation lies in that the knowledge of the change rule can guide users to select the suitable flowmeters in some specific application, rather than simply choosing the meters with larger R/D, which may help to reduce the system cost. In addition, the actual R/D instead of the theoretical manufacturing R/D is used to calculate the volume of flow, which can improve the measurement accuracy. The evaluation system developed with VB, Access, and MATLAB has been applied to some thermal power plant, the good usage effect having been obtained.