Ultrasonic flowmeter for clean and dirty fluids

Abstract

An ultrasonic flowmeter for accurately measuring the flow rate of clean or dirty industrial process fluids passing through a pipe provided with upstream and downstream transducers. A transmission signal produced by a high-frequency generator acts to energize the transducers which are alternately excited at a relatively low switching rate whereby a beam emitted by the excited transducer is propagated through the fluid at an angle to the flow axis of the pipe and is intercepted by the other transducer to yield a received signal that is displaced in phase from the transmission signal to an extent depending on the transit time of the beam which reverses direction during each switching cycle. The received signals from the transducers are converted into a square wave that is compared to a wave derived from the transmission signal to produce a comparison output which is fed through a low-pass filter to exclude the high frequency content thereof. The filter yields a square wave in which the voltage drop between the upper level of the wave representing beam transit time in one direction and the lower level representing beam transit time in the reverse direction, reflects the time delay difference between these transit times. The flow rate of the fluid is then derived from the time delay difference.