Understanding installation problems with ultrasonic clamp on flowmeters

Young Calibration was contracted to undertake a simple correlation study on the user installation variation when installing ultrasonic clamp on meters for fluid flow measurements. Meters were installed to the manufacturer’s guidelines by four different field technicians on a 100 mm pipeline. The study was conducted using two transit time type meters; a low-cost model single channel model and  a high-performance dual channel meter. The findings highlighted a large sensitivity to user installation on the low-cost single channel model, with a flow rate error variance of 5 to 32% whilst the high-performance dual channel clamp-on meter recorded error variance of -0.5 to 3%. In the first of our application notes for ultrasonic clamp on meters it is astoundingly clear that meter quality is a significant contributor to attaining accurate flow measurement results. In future parts we will be discussing installation effects in more detail; with traverse type set-up, coupling pastes, pipe sizes, particulate/bubbles, pipe condition and how meter diagnostics can help you achieve better results.