Flow Rate & It’s

Measurement
BSME01173110
BSME01173113
BSME01173150
 Flow Rate

• Flow rate or volume flow rate can be defined as:

“the volume of fluid that is passing through a given cross sectional area per unit time”.
The term cross sectional area is just a
fancy term often used to describe the
area through which something is
flowing, e.g., the circular area inside
the dashed line in the diagram below.
 Flow Rate Eq. and Unit
• Since volume flow rate measures the amount of volume that passes through
an area per time, the equation for the volume flow rate looks like this:
Q=Volume / time = V/t
• In S.I. units (International System of Units), volume flow rate has units of
meters cubed per second, m3/s , since it tells you the number of cubic
meters of fluid that flow per second.
 History
• Since we are studying about flow of fluid and are going to study it so
measuring the flow rate of fluid is part of fluid mechanics and since
• Fluid mechanics is the study of fluids either in motion (fluid dynamics) or at rest (fluid
statics). Both liquids and gases are classified as fluids.
• The history of fluid mechanics, the study of how fluids move and
the forces on them, dates back to the ancient civilization of greek.
 History
• Archimedes (285 – 212 B.C.) postulated the parallelogram law for addition
of vectors and the laws of buoyancy and applied them to floating and
submerged objects.
• Abu Rayhan Biruni (973–1048) and later Al-Khazini (fl. 1115–1130), were
the first to apply experimental scientific methods to fluid mechanics,
especially in the field of fluid statics, such as for determining specific
weights.
 History
• Leonardo da Vinci (1452 – 1519) stated the equation of conservation of
mass in one‐dimensional steady‐state flow. He experimented with waves,
jets.etc.
• Isaac Newton (1642 – 1727) postulated his laws of motion and the law of
viscosity of linear fluids, now called Newtonian. The theory first yield the
frictionless assumption which led to several mathematical solutions. Though
this assumption is just an ideal case .
• Leonhard Euler (1707 – 1783) developed both the differential equations of
motion and their integral form, now called Bernoulli equation.
• Navier (1785 – 1836) and Stokes (1819 – 1903) added newtonian viscous
term to the equation of motion, the fluid motion governing equation, i.e.,
Navier‐Stokes equation is named after them.
• So basically the study of fluid either in motion or in static condition has been
going on for a long time and this time our aim is to study about flow rate Q
and its measurement.
 Flow Measurement
• Flow measurement is the quantification of bulk fluid movement.
• Measurement of flow, whether it is a liquid or gas, is commonly a critical
parameter in many processes. In most operations it is important to know that
the right fluid is at the right place at the right time. Some critical applications
require the ability to conduct accurate flow measurements to ensure product
quality .
Instruments used to measure Flow rate ‘Q’
• Flow can be measured in a variety of ways. The common types of
flowmeters with industrial applications are listed below:
• Obstruction type (differential pressure meters)
• Inferential volume flow meters (turbine type)
• Electromagnetic flow meters.
• Anemometer
• Mass flowmeter
 Obstruction type (differential pressure
meters)
• Differential pressure flowmeters use Bernoulli’s equation to measure the flow
of fluid in a pipe.
• Differential pressure is a pressure that is measured relative to the pressure in
the atmosphere around it.
 Working
• Differential pressure flowmeters introduce a constriction in the pipe that
creates a pressure drop across the flowmeter.
• When the flow increases, more pressure drop is created. This is how we get
the pressure difference.
• Impulse piping routes the upstream(region where the pressure is higher) and
downstream(region where the pressure is lower) pressures of the flowmeter
to the transmitter that measures the differential pressure to determine the
fluid flow.