ULTRASONIC FLOW METER

• Main Authors: SUGI TOKIO, SASAKI TADAO
• Format: Patent
• Language: English
• Published: 01.11.2007
• Subjects: CALCULATING; COMPUTING; COUNTING; ELECTRIC DIGITAL DATA PROCESSING; MEASURING; MEASURING VOLUME, VOLUME FLOW, MASS FLOW OR LIQUIDLEVEL; METERING BY VOLUME; PHYSICS; TESTING

In an ultrasonic flow meter for measuring a flow rate of a fluid flowing through a conduit by detecting a propagating time difference between a forward propagating time of an ultrasonic wave propagating within the conduit in a forward direction and a backward propagating time of an ultrasonic wave propagating within the conduit in a backward direction, forward and backward ultrasonic wave signals generated by ultrasonic vibrating elements are sampled to derive forward and backward digital data series x and y, which are stored in a memory, the forward and backward digital data series x and y are read out of the first and second memory units and total sums of absolute difference values between the forward and backward digital data series x and y are calculated, while data positions of these backward and forward digital data series x and y are relatively shifted, a shift amount of data positions at which a total sum of absolute difference values becomes minimum is detected, an ultrasonic propagating time difference is derived in accordance with the detected shift amount of data positions, a flow speed of the fluid within the conduit is derived from the ultrasonic wave propagating time difference, and a flow rate of the fluid flowing through the conduit is derived in accordance with the flow speed and a known cross sectional area of the conduit.