Study on Internal Flow Characteristics of Water Flowmeter using Unsteady Computational Fluid Analysis

Abstract

Computational Fluid Dynamics has been carried out for water flowmeter on this study. Two water flowmeters with different geometry have been modeled through the reverse engineering technique. Flow characteristics and rotation per minute of the blade have been calculated using body interaction function between internal passage of the flowmeter and the blade. As results of flow analysis, the flow momentum of FM1 is more evenly applied compared with that of FM2, which means that the blade of FM1 rotates more uniformly than that of FM2. The flow pattern of FM1 is well distributed from the bottom and middle to top, but that of FM2 shows lack of uniformity. It is believed that the uniformity of rotation is disrupted due to the ununiform momentum delivered on the blade wing. If we assume that the rotational speed is linearly proportional to the inlet flowrate, FM1 has 5.9% and FM2 has 16.8% error. FM1 is superior to FM2 in linearity. These results could be utilized as basic data to design inner structure of the flowmeter and to develop performance.