Turbine rotor blade and motion sensor based flow metering instrumentation for measuring motion of a substance.
Related Technical Terms
A turbine rotor sensor is used to measure the speed of a substance passing through the inside of the turbine. A turbine consists of a series of blades mounted around a rotatable shaft which runs parallel and centrally within a tube or pipe. The rotor blades are angled enough to generate sufficient rotation and performance whilst keeping any interference with the measured quantity to a minimum.
There a few ways to measure the rotation speed of the turbine; magnets are fitted to the blades and a stationary magnetic pickup sensor mounted close to the outer circumference of the turbine counts each time a blade passes; a photoelectric cell is used instead of a magnetic pickup; or a gearing mechanism linked to a rotational sensor is attached directly to the turbines rotating shaft.
Each of the above sensing methods will generate a counting signal, which when combined with the time measurement will produce a rotational speed signal which is proportional to the speed of the substance moving through the turbine.
A flow meter is category of device that is assigned to any instrument which can measure either directly or indirectly the quantity of a substance passing through a specific location.
A flow meter will typically measure the speed of flow as the primary reading, and some depending on the technology may include additional secondary readings to compensate for variations in flow due to pressure, temperature, density and viscosity changes. Some flowmeters include additional instrumentation to manipulate the flow reading to provide other functions such as the total quantity indication, or alarms each time a batch has been completed.