Flow velocity

Flow velocity of a fluid is defined as:

A vector field which is used to mathematically describe the motion of a
fluid. The length of the flow velocity vector is the flow speed. The flow
velocity u of a fluid is a vector field
Which gives the velocity of an element of fluid at a position
time .

and

Flow velocity is a vector quantity used to describe the motion of a

fluid. It can be easily determined for laminar flow but complex to
determine for turbulent flow.

Why is there a need of techniques for velocity flow

measurement?
Velocity flow measurement techniques allow for the measurement
of total flow by measuring the velocity of the fluid within a fixed area duct
or pipe. The technique uses a measuring probe to determine the velocity
of the fluid in the center portion of the pipe.

It is important to understand that with all fluid flows, there are

boundary layer effects at the interface between the walls of the duct or
pipe and the fluid flowing through it. For this technique to provide
reasonably accurate results, the velocity measurement of the flow must be
made well within the duct, to minimize the effects of the boundary layers.

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For this reason ducts or pipes of small diameter typically do not fair well
with this technique.

The technique also requires that you be in a laminar flow

environment. The results in a turbulent flow area suffer in stability and
accuracy. It is possible to calculate the location where the flow in a pipe
or duct is fully laminar, but for most applications a general rule of thumb
is sufficient. That rule is to make the measurement at least 10 pipe
diameters upstream and 20 pipe diameters downstream of any junction,
elbow or other flow disturbing point in the pipe.

Techniques for measuring the volume flow rate:

There are many techniques for measuring the volume flow rate.
These include:
Turbine meters
Vortex flow meters
Rota meters
Electromagnetic flow meters
Ultrasonic flow meters
These can and are used to measure flow rate in turbulent flows.
They dont tell us anything about the turbulence.

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In a sense, the volume flow rate devices really measure the velocity of the
flow. For the most part, though, they measure the mean velocity of the
fluid.

Techniques for measuring the flow velocity:

For many applications, we want to measure the velocity at a point. In

particular, if were interested in measuring the local velocity in a
turbulent flow . . .
Here, we have four choices:
Pitot tube
Hot-wire anemometry
Laser Doppler anemometry (or velocimetry) (LDV)
Particle image velocimetry (PIV)

Pitot tube
The Pitot tube is a simple device that allows for the
measurement of the flow pressure in a moving fluid.

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 Working of Pitot tube

It works in much the same way as the restriction flow meters
do. The tip brings the fluid moving towards to a stop, so the pressure you
measure there is the stagnation pressure. The pressure along the side of
the tube corresponds (you hope) to the static pressure in the free stream.
You use Bernoullis equation to get the velocity.

By solving we get the following equation:

Now by simply multiply it by the area of the duct to get the total volume
flow.

Advantageous of Pitot tube

The Pitot tube is a simple, inexpensive, and highly reliable
device since it has no moving parts.
Requires only a few access holes into the flow conduit; no wide
open cut needed.
It also causes very small pressure drop and usually does not
disturb the flow appreciably. However, it is important that it must
be properly aligned with the flow to avoid significant errors that
may be caused by misalignment.
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 Almost no calibration required.

The difference between the static and stagnation pressures (which
is the dynamic pressure) is proportional to the density of the fluid
and the square of the flow velocity. It can be used to measure
velocity in both liquids and gases.

Disadvantageous of Pitot tube

Not suitable for measuring low velocities (< 5 m/s).
Not suitable for the measurement of highly fluctuating velocities.
Pitot tube must be aligned with the flow velocity to obtain good
results.

Hot-wire Anemometry
While Pitot tubes work well for high flow rates in gases, and a
variety of flow rates in liquids, the technique fails for low air
velocities in gases. To solve this gap in velocity measurement
technology, the hot wire and hot film probes were developed. This
technique is fairly straight forward in concept, but much more
difficult in operation.

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 Working of Hot-wire Anemometry

Working is that if you place a resistance wire in the flow of
air (or other gas) and heat the wire with a fixed current, the voltage
across the wire will indicate the resistance of the wire. If you know
the properties of the wire you can deduce what its temperature is.
Knowing this information, you can determine how much heat is
being carried away by the moving stream of gas flowing across the
wire or film.

Types of hot wire anemometer

1. Constant Current Anemometer

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Wheatstone bridge is fed by constant electric current. The series

resistivity of the
energy source is set
large w.r.t. to the
total resistivity of
the bridge, in order
to keep current
constant at all times.
Temperature and
resistivity change of
the hot wire induces
an unbalance of the
voltage at the
vertical bridge diagonal, which is manifested as flow velocity.

2. Constant Temperature Anemometer

Maintaining constant resistance R of
the probe implies that temperature is
also kept constant. The output
voltage provides measure of the heat
transfer from the probe. This heat
transfer is a measure of the fluid
parameter under consideration at
that time.

3. Thermal flow Anemometer

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An industrial version of the fine-wire anemometer is the thermal

flow meter, which follows the same concept but uses two pins or stings to
monitor the variation in temperature. The stings contain fine wires, but
encasing the wires makes them much more durable and capable of
accurately measuring air, gas, and emissions flow in pipes, ducts, and
stacks. Industrial applications often contain dirt that will damage the
classic hot-wire anemometer.

Advantageous
Advantageous of hot wire anemometer are given below:
Hot wire probes are extremely fast response devices.
With a wire size in the micrometers.
The probe can respond to temperature changes at rates faster than 1
millisecond. This makes this type of probe ideal for studies of
turbulent flows.
Scientific level meters are available from a number of companies
that will respond to these high rates of change.
Smaller hand held units that respond much slower are available for
a few hundred dollars and are a good solution to a low flow
application.

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 The accuracy of these devices is typically around 1% or so and are

generally designed for use in air, although most can be calibrated
for other gasses as well.
High frequency response, >10 kHz (up to 400 kHz).

Limitations
The difficulty with this is that the density, temperature and actual
makeup of the gas flowing affect the heat absorption as well as the
flow.
o Solutions
This has been handled in a number of ways:
1. The most straightforward is to use two wires. One in the flow and
one out of the flow, and make your measurement based on the
difference of these two values.
2. A second method is to make an assumption that the reading is being
made in standard air which has a known coefficient of absorption.
Using this method the only values that are needed are hot wire value
and the temperature of the air prior to the hot wire.
Needs to be recalibrated frequently due to dust accumulation.
It does not sense the flow direction
Fluid may decompose due to high temperature

These are very good measurements, however they may not be

appropriate for all applications.

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 Laser Doppler anemometry (or velocimetry) (LDV)

Laser Doppler Anemometry is a technique for measuring the
direction and speed of fluids.

Why Laser Doppler Anemometry?

Most flow measuring instruments measure physical quantities which
are functions of the flow velocity. Measuring quantities by which flow
velocity is determined, often are functions of the properties of state of the
fluid medium, which have to be known. They have to be taken into
account in the calibration of the measuring method. These difficulties led
to development of LDV.
Working of LDV
In its simplest form, LDV crosses two beams of collimated,
monochromatic, and coherent laser light in the flow of the fluid being
measured. The Laser Doppler Anemometer sends a monochromatic laser
beam toward the target and collects the reflected radiation. Change in
wavelength of the reflected radiation is a function of the targeted object's
relative velocity (Doppler Effect).Typically, a Helium-Neon or Argon ion
laser with a power of 10 mW to 20 W is used.

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Laser Doppler anemometers use a beam of light from a laser that is

divided into two beams, with one propagated out of the anemometer.
Particulates flowing along with air molecules near where the beam exits
reflect, or backscatter, the light back into a detector, where it is measured
relative to the original laser beam. When the particles are in great motion,
they produce a Doppler shift for measuring wind speed in the laser light,
which is used to calculate the speed of the particles, and therefore the air
around the anemometer.

Applications of laser Doppler anemometry

Investigation of boundary layers and shock wave interaction
phenomena for both laminar and turbulent flow
Determination of 3-D wing tip vortices near the tips of the
aircraft wings
Measurement of flow b/w the blades of turbines
In measurement of blood flows
Remote sensing of wind velocities

Advantages of laser Doppler anemometry

Non-Contact type of measurement

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 Direct way of measuring local velocity in all three spatial

coordinates.
Very high frequency response of order of MHz is possible.
Very high accuracies of the order of 0.2 %.
Limitations of laser Doppler anemometry
Sufficient transparency is required between the laser source, the
target surface, and the photo detector.
Accuracy is highly dependent on alignment of emitted and reflected
beams.
Expensive prices have dropped as commercial lasers have matured

PARTICLE IMAGE VELOCIMETRY

Particle image velocimetry is an optical method of flow visualization used
in
education
and
research.
It
is
used
to
obtain
instantaneous velocity measurements and related properties in fluids. The
fluid is seeded with tracer particles which, for sufficiently small particles,
are assumed to faithfully follow the flow dynamics (the degree to which
the particles faithfully follow the flow is represented by the Stokes
number). The fluid with entrained particles is illuminated so that particles
are visible. The motion of the seeding particles is used to calculate speed
and direction (the velocity field) of the flow being studied.
Other techniques used to measure flows are laser Doppler
velocimetry and hot-wire anemometry. The main difference between PIV
and those techniques is that PIV produces two-dimensional or even threedimensional vector fields, while the other techniques measure the velocity
at a point. During PIV, the particle concentration is such that it is possible
to identify individual particles in an image, but not with certainty to track
it between images. When the particle concentration is so low that it is
possible to follow an individual particle it is called Particle tracking
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velocimetry, while Laser speckle velocimetry is used for cases where the
particle concentration is so high that it is difficult to observe individual
particles in an image.

Particle image velocimetry Applications

Aerodynamics
Hydrodynamics
Internal Combustion Engines
Reactive Flows
Mixing Flows
Spray Formation
Flows in Pumping and Rotating Machinery
Flows in Devices for Life Sciences and Biomedical Work
Quantifying the deformation and motion of solid materials or tissues
that have embedded markers or are in some other way visually
heterogeneous
Advantages Particle image velocimetry
Nonintrusive.
Capable of measuring an entire two-dimensional cross section
(geometry) of the flow field simultaneously.

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 Allows the generation of large numbers of image pairs which,

are analyzed in real or later time. Thus near continuous
information may be gained.
High degree of accuracy, since each vector is the statistical
average for many particles within a particular tile.
Limitations of Particle image velocimetry
The particles will, due to their higher density, not exactly follow the
motion of the fluid (gas/liquid).
PIV in general will not be able to measure components along the zaxis.
The size of the recordable flow field is limited by the size of the
tracer particles.
The resulting velocity field is a spatially averaged representation of
the actual velocity field. Accuracy of spatial derivatives of the
velocity field, and spatial correlation functions (derived from PIV
velocity fields) are affected.

Rotameter
A rotameter is a device that measures the flow rate of liquid or gas in a
closed tube.
It belongs to a class of meters called variable area meters, which measure
flow rate by allowing the cross-sectional area the fluid travels through, to
vary, causing a measurable effect.

Why Use a Rotameter (Variable Area Meter) to Measure

Flow
Their top six responses are clues as to why a rotameter continues to
be successful even after a hundred years.
1. No external power required Rotameters are mechanical devices which
do not require power to provide flow measurement. This allows
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2.

3.

4.

5.

6.

rotameters to be installed in hazardous areas and remote areas where it

would be expensive to supply power.
You can see the process Customers not only get a flow measurement
reading but a look into their process. Is the process dirty or cloudy
looking which could mean filters need to be changed? Is the process the
correct color, are their bubbles in the liquid.
Rotameters are cost effective Rotameters can be installed with other
flow measurement technologies and be used to complement each other
at an economical price.
Simple to install and maintain Rotameters are quickly installed by
connecting the process line to the inlet and the outlet of the rotameter.
Make sure the meter is vertical and you are now ready to measure flow.
Low pressure drop Most small rotameters have only a few inches of
water column pressure drop. This means rotameters can be installed in
many places in the process. Small pressure drops mean smaller pumps!
Repeatability Given the same process conditions a rotameter will
accurately repeat the flow measurement day after day.
These six features assure rotameters will continue to be important
products to measure flow now and in the future.

Working of rotameter
When fluid or gas flows through a taper tube containing a float,
a pressure difference of P1 and P2 is created between upper and
lower side of the float. The float moves upwards by a force obtained
by multiplying the pressure differential by the maximum cross
sectional area of the float.
Due to taper tube, as the float moves upwards, the fluid passing area
increases as a result of which the differential pressure decreases.
Upward movement of float stops when the dead load is dynamically
balanced by the differential pressure. Tapering of metering tube is so

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designed that the vertical movement of the float becomes linearly

proportional to the rate of flow and the scale is provided to read the
position of the float, thus giving birth to flow rate indication.
Based on Bemoulli's theorem, the principle mentioned above can be
theoretically expressed as follows.
FLOW FORMULA

Where
Q = Volumetric flow rate
V = Volume of Float
C = Flow coefficient
Af = Maximum pressure receiving area of float.
A = Fluid passing Area
P = Float Density
g = gravimetric acceleration
y = Fluid Density

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 Advantageous
A rotameter requires no external power or fuel, it uses only the
inherent properties of the fluid, along with gravity, to measure flow
rate
A rotameter is also a relatively simple device that canbe mass
manufactured out of cheap materials, allowing for its widespread
use.
Since the area of the flow passage increases as the float moves up
the tube, the scale is approximately linear
Clear glass is used which is highly resistant to thermal shock and
chemical action.

pg. 17

 Disadvantageous
Due to its use of gravity, a rotameter must always be vertically
oriented and right way up, with the fluid flowing upward.
Due to its reliance on the ability of the fluid or gas to displace the
float, graduations on a given rotameter will only be accurate for a
given substance at a given temperature. The main property of
importance is the density of the fluid; however, viscosity may also
be significant. Floats are ideally designed to be insensitive to
viscosity; however, this is seldom verifiable from manufacturers'
specifications. Either separate rotameters for different densities and
viscosities may be used, or multiple scales on the same rotameter
can be used.
Due to the direct flow indication the resolution is relatively poor
compared to other measurement principles.

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