A selective literature review of methods for measuring the flow rate in pipe transient flows

An ideal flow meter / technique for measuring rapidly-changing unsteady flows should satisfy the following characteristics: low cost, minimum intrusiveness, small physical size and fast response time. This paper gives an overview of major types of commercial flow meters in terms of these characteristics and shows that currently no method is capable of measuring unsteady flows at the millisecond time scale without the need for particle seeding or significant system alterations. This paper presents an attractive method which uses high-speed dynamic pressure measurements to determine the unsteady flow rate and this technique shows promise for future field applications. © BHR Group 2012 Pressure Surges 11