Ads Environmental Services, Inc.

Larry M Fullerton

Alan M Petroff

A sonic-type fluid flow measuring system wherein reflections or echoes of a burst 103 of ultrasonic energy from an ultrasonic acoustic emitter 9a are sensed and typically comprise a number of frequencies representative of a number of discrete velocities of flow in a volume of fluid. A receiver transducer 13a is gated to receive echoes from a selected volume of fluid 104 a selected distance from transducer 13a. Thereafter, this time domain signal sample is converted to a frequency domain sample whereby the presence and magnitude of each frequency component, or velocity component, is isolated, this being typically done by what is known as a Fast Fourier Transform unit 42a, obtaining a frequency domain waveform representative of average flow velocity. A variable noise threshold stored in register 52a is subtracted from the waveform to remove electronic noise, and the result integrated by integrator unit 54a to compensate for the return echoes returning from a slightly curved plane of the outwardly propagating wavefront. Seven of these samples are stored, and averaged by averaging-velocity translator unit 58a to obtain an average result, which is applied to averaging-velocity translator unit 58a, which averages these stored velocities and applies the result to output unit 64a for disposition.

Growing community of inventors

Huntsville, AL, United States of America

Larry M Fullerton