What is Water flow meter and how it works?
What is Water flow meter
A water flow meter is nothing but a device that can measure how much water is flowing through a pipe. Various types of water flow meters are available for you to choose from, based on the maintenance requirements, budget and water measurement applications. Each kind of water flow meter has a singular operational principle, individual application advantages and overall ownership cost. Find out about how the different types of water flow meters work.
Mechanical Flow Meters
These are the commonest and most affordable form of water flow meter that measures flow via rotation of turbine with a paddle wheel, propeller or shunt design. These meters operate by measuring how fast water flows through a pipe that makes a turbine or piston rotate. The blades’ rotational speed is proportional to the volumetric flow rate of water.
Vortex Flow Meters
These make use of vortices that are shed from a sensor that is absorbed in the flow. Vortices are actually swirls that are generated when a fluid goes past an impediment, such as water that flows around a stone or a wind moves past a flagpole. A sensor tab, in this type of meter, flexes sideways when every vortex tends to flow past and lead to a frequency output which is proportional directly to the volumetric flow rate.
Ultrasonic Flow Meter
These can measure the pace of fluid moving through the pipe and making volumetric flow measurement with the help of ultrasound. An ultrasonic signal is transmitted in a transit-time styled meter like this in the direction of the fluid flowing upstream, and another signal that is sent against the fluid flowing upstream. In its simplest form, the time taken by the sonic pulse to move downstream is compared with the time that the pulse takes to move upstream. The speed of the flowing fluid is measured with the help of this differential time. The meter then calculates the pipe’s volumetric flow rate with this fluid velocity.
Magnetic Flow Meter
These kinds of meters can measure the pace of fluid moving through a pipe with the help of a magnetic field that is used for volumetric flow measurement. The working of these meters is based on Law of Electromagnetic Induction of Faraday, which states that voltage is generated by liquid while passing through a magnetic field. The faster the flow of fluid is, the higher the voltage that is produced. The voltage that is generated is directly proportional to the movement o water. The electronics processes the voltage signal into the volumetric flow rate. However, these kinds of meters never exhibit an intermediate accuracy which makes them improper to be used for custody transfer.
Which kind of water flow meter should be used is based on the particular application. For example, some types of flow meters perform better while measuring various things. You need to watch videos, go through white papers and make use of selection tools for detecting which is the best Sierra flow measurement product for water and liquid flow application.
