This British Standard identifies factors, including installation effects, pipework, fluid effects, operational effects and supplier specific effects, which are likely to affect the performance of clamp-on (externally mounted) ultrasonic transit time flow-meters (TTUF). This includes hybrid spool type clamp-on meters where the spool piece is specifically machined to suit the clamp-on meter.
This standard examines the likely effect of these factors, identifies best operational practice for such meters and provides estimates of the overall uncertainty that can be achieved when employing best practice.
This standard provides a description of the non-invasive TTUF, typical application areas, the performance measures which should be used in assessing the meter performance and the likely performance in terms of error, repeatability and reproducibility when used under ideal flow, pipe, fluid and operational conditions.
It also covers the installation of transit time meters, where the transducers are clamped on to the outside of a proprietary meter spool.
There are currently two other commonly used non-invasive ultrasonic flow measurement technologies. These are the Doppler ultrasonic flow-meter (DUF) and the cross-correlation ultrasonic flow-meter (CCUF). The scope of this British Standard is restricted to the use of transit time meters since such flow-meters are likely to give rise to a metering technique with the widest range of application and the highest accuracies and lowest uncertainties. Because of the need to distinguish between the different ultrasonic technologies and their applications, Annex B and Annex C provide a comparative overview of Doppler ultrasonic flow-meters and cross-correlation ultrasonic flow-meters.