Determination of air flow rate in a rectangular closed conduit by principle of velocity-area method

Abstract

In the technical practice, it is often necessary to measure or control the fluid flow rate in pipelines and channels. The velocity-area method requires a number of meters located at specified points in a suitable cross-section of closed conduits. Simultaneous measurements of local mean velocity with the meters are integrated over the gauging section to provide the discharge. In this paper, three approaches of this method are applied on a rectangular closed conduit to determine the air flowrate with integration techniques used to compute the discharge assume velocity distributions that closely approximate known laws, especially in the neighborhood of solid boundaries. For this purpose, meters for velocity were 7 Pitot tubes place vertically in predefined measurement points covering the conduit height, and moved horizontally along the conduit width. The position of the Pitot tubes along the conduit width was monitored and controlled by a linear displacement transducer. Pressure is measured using digital sensors. The first technique for determination of air flow rate is on basis of fixed (stopping) measuring points across the conduit width as averaged values of local velocity, the second one is semi continual measurement of velocity profile by applying interpolation between the average local velocity on fixed(stopping) points and measured velocity in the movement between two positions, and the third is by continuously moving the Pitot tubes without stopping. The results of the three techniques are calculated and presented using different types of software. Considering the last technique, comparison of results is made applying different movement speeds of the Pitot tubes in order to examine their influence on the velocity profile.