2016 International Conference on Instrumentation, Control and Automation (ICA)

InstitutTeknologi Bandung (ITB), Bandung, Indonesia, August 29-31, 2016

Ultrasonic Tomographic Flowmeter using Dual-

Transducers for the Reconstruction of an
AsymmetricVelocity Profile
1,2
K. Amri, 1Suprijanto, 1E. Juliastuti, 1D. Kurniadi
1
Instrumentation and Control Research Group, Institut Teknologi Bandung, Bandung, Indonesia
2
Department of Mechanical Engineering, Politeknik Negeri Padang, Padang, Indonesia
mr.khairul.amri@gmail.com

Abstract—Tomographic ultrasonic flowmeter (TUF) is a acquired by mechanical-scanning method [3]. Unfortunately,

system that is capable of reconstructing the velocity profile and
estimating the average flow velocity with better accuracy than
the conventional ultrasonic flowmeter (USM). Unfortunately, the
TUF has a lower temporal resolution due to its need of large
number of measurement data from tranduscers. In this work,
two pairs of transducer modules, called dual-ultrasonic
transducers, are implemented to reduce the required time for
data collection. Each pair of the transducers consists of a
transmitter and a receiver. This technique can measure the time
of flight(TOF) of ultrasonic wave from upstream to downstream,
and vice versa, simultaneously. Numerical simulations and
experiments are conducted to investigate the performance of the
TUF for reconstructing an asymmetric velocity profile. The
numerical simulation result shows that the TUF with six pairs of
ultrasonic transducers successfully reconstruct a 2D velocity
profile that is close to the results obtained by theoretical analysis.
The path configuration of six pairs of dual-ultrasonic transducers
has been implemented experimentally on a TUF prototype. The
experimental results show that the processing time for data
acquisition is about 40ms. The velocity profile obtained by TUF is
also confirmed with the USM technique, based on the diametrical
and mid radius configurations. The results show that the air
velocity measured by every path of those configurations is
consistent with that obtained by the TUF in the same position.
The differences vary from 0.355% to 19.62% and from 0.304%
to 14.51% for mid radius and diametral, respectively, even
though none of their acoustic path are directly coincide.
Keywords—Ultrasonic flowmeter; tomographic method; dual-
ultrasonic transducers; flow velocity profile
I. INTRODUCTION
In a gas processing industry, physical information such as
gas flow rate is required. An efficient system cannot be
achieved solely based on the average fluid flow velocity
information. Another information on the velocity distribution
of gas in a cross-section pipe, namely flow profile, is also very
important. Tomographic Ultrasonic Flowmeter (TUF) (cf. Fig.
1.d) is a solution to obtain the velocity profile and an accurate
average fluid velocity. Unfortunately, the TUF has a lower
temporal resolution due to the needs of a large number of
measurement data obtained from many tranduscers.
To address the issue of low temporal resolution, recent
researches [1-2] have utilized electronic scanning that is
capable of obtaining experimental data faster than those
for one measurement process, the required time was about 160
milliseconds [2]. If there is a sudden change in the velocity
profile during that time, then the obtained average flow
velocity and the reconstructed profiles data are no longer true.
The TUF with dual-ultrasonic transducers is proposed to
overcome the above problems. This technique is capable of
measuring the time of flight (TOF) of an ultrasonic wave from
upstream to downstream, and vice versa, simultaneously. It
successfully reduces one measurement process by up to almost
50% of the conventional method [4]. Experimental data have
also shown that the required time for one measurement
process of the TUF with dual-ultrasonic transducers is about
40 ms, which is much shorter than those carried out in [2].
The reminder of this paper is organized as follows. Section
II presents the measurement principle of USM and dual-
ultrasonic transducers. TUF method and its numerical
simulation by using a number of different transducers are
described in Section III. Section IV discusses the front-end of
the experimental setup and its result. Finally, conclusion is
provided in Section V.
II. ULTRASONIC FLOWMETER WITH DUAL-TRANSDUCER
A. USM Transit Time
The basic principle of USM transit time is based on the
TOF of ultrasonic wave, which propagates from upstream to
downstream, and vice versa. Several examples of USM path
configuration are illustrated in Fig. 1. For the conventional
USM with a diametrical configuration, two ultrasonic
transducers are inserted onto the wall of a pipe and positioned
opposite to each other to form an angle of θ with the axial
pipeline (Fig. 1.a). Transducer [Trn.up] acts as the transmitter
and [Trn.dwn] as the receiver, and vice versa. The TOF of
(a) (b) (c) (d)
Fig. 1. USM with a diametrical configuration in (a) along the pipenline and
(b) cross-section view, (c) midradius and (d) TUF in cross-section view

978-1-5090-1335-7/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE

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ultrasonic wave from [Trn.up] to [Trn.dwn] is called tdwn,
while that from [Trn.dwn] to [Trn.up] is tup. If both values are
known, then the fluid flow velocity (v) can be calculated as
௅ ଵ ଵ
‫ ݒ‬ൌ ୱ୧୬ ଶఏ ൬௧ െ௧ ൰
೏ೢ೙ ೠ೛
where L is a pipe diameter. If a multi-chordal acoustic is used,
like midradius and tomography (Fig.1.c, d), the average flow
velocity (v̄)̅ can be determined as (2).
‫ݒ‬ҧ ൌ σ݊݅ൌͳ ‫݅ݒ ݅ݓ‬
where wi is a weighting factor of the path i-th, vi is the fluid
velocity measured by the path i-th, while n for the total
number of acoustic path.
B. Dual- ultrasonic Transducers
Dual-ultrasonic transducers module are defined as a pair of
two transducers, where on each side has transmitter and
receiver. An acoustic path made with a dual-ultrasonic
transducer is shown in Fig. 2b. Each transmitter deals directly
with the receiver at a distance s. The operational principle of a
dual-ultrasonic is slightly different than the conventional USM
that was explained in Section II.A (Fig.2.a). In a dual-
ultrasonic transducer, each pair of transmitters on [Trn.up] and
[Trn.dwn] is simultaneously activated by microcontrollers.
Two timers in the 2 microcontrollers also turn on at the same
time. The timer will stop when the ultrasonic wave has
reached the receiver. In this technique, 2 microcontrollers are
employed, one serves to activate the transmitters and also to
measure tup, while the other only serves to measure tdwn.
The comparison of the data collection time between the
dual-ultrasonic and the conventional methods can be presented
as (3). The dual-ultrasonic transducer is capable of saving data
collection time up to almost 50% as compared to the
conventional technique [4].
tcon = tup + tdown
tstt = tup
where tcon is the total time for one measurement process by the
conventional technique and tstt for the dual-ultrasonic
transducers.
(a) (b)
Fig.2. The principle of TOF measurements using (a) conventional and (b)
dual-ultrasonic transducers.
III. TUF FOR VELOCITY PROFILE MEASUREMENT
A. Basic Principle
In this study, parallel beam of ultrasonic wave is employed
.
to obtain projection of the velocity distribution in a cross-
section pipe, because its approach is suitable with the
arrangement of TUF transducers. Furthermore, filtered back
projection (FBP) algorithm is used to reconstruct the velocity
(1) profile.
The procedure of FBP is started by measuring the parallel
projection of velocity profile, namely Radon function, Pθ (t),
for every angle projection from 00 to 1800. Radon function at
θ=00 is equivalent with the line integral of velocity profile
(2) v(x,y) at that angle shown in (4)
ஶ
ܲఏୀ଴ ሺ‫ݔ‬ሻ ൌ ‫ି׬‬ஶ ‫ݒ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ሻ݀‫ݕ‬ (4)
By using Fourier transform to Pθ(t), Sθ(w) is obtained as (5).
Sθ(w) is then multiplied by a weighting function and filtered
to obtain Q as shown in (6). Finally, a reconstruction image of
a flow profile v(x,y) is obtained after all Q for every angle
projection are aggregated using (7) [5].
ஶ
ܵఏ ሺ‫ݓ‬ሻ ൌ ‫ି׬‬ஶ ܲఏ ሺ‫ݐ‬ሻ݁ ି௝ଶగ௪௧ ݀‫ݐ‬ (5)
ஶ
ܳఏ ሺ‫ݓ‬ሻ ൌ ‫ି׬‬ஶ ܵఏ ሺ‫ݓ‬ሻȁ‫ݓ‬ȁ݁ ௝ଶగ௪௧ ݀‫ݐ‬ (6)
గ
‫ݒ‬ሺ‫ݔ‬ǡ ‫ݕ‬ሻ ൌ σ௄
௜ୀଵ ܳఏ೔ ሺ‫ߠ •‘… ݔ‬௜ ൅ ‫ߠ ‹• ݕ‬௜ ሻ (7)
௄
where w represents the frequency response of the filter, K is
defined as the number of projection from 00 until 1800, Q is
the filtered projection, θ indicates the angle of parallel
projection, x and y stand for coordinate of velocity
distribution in a pipe cross-section.
B. Numerical Simulation
To evaluate the performance of TUF with regard to the
accuracy of the reconstructed algorithm and the number of
pair transducers, numerical simulations are performed. Two
theoretical asymmetric flow profiles introduced by Salami,
namely P2 and P6 comprising two and one peak, are used as
(3) references [6]. The reconstructed images with 201
interpolations that are generated using a number of different
transducers are compared with the references visually and
quantitatively as shown in Table I. Color bar next to the
theoretical profiles indicates the magnitude of velocity. By
referring to Table I, configuration with 5 pair transducers is
quite capable to reconstruct P6, but does not fit the image of
P2. Meanwhile, TUF with 6 pair transducers is able to
reconstruct the image of the references, both for P2 and P6.
When the number of pair transducers increases up to 10, it has
no significant impact to reduce the reconstruction error. Based
on finding, TUF with 6 pair transducers is then made by hand.
IV. EXPERIMENTAL SETUP
The setup used in the experiments is shown in Fig.3a
which composed of three phase blower, AC motor controller
and TUF. The blower is employed to generate unsteady and
complex air flow velocity profile. Meanwhile, the output
frequency of AC motor controller that is able to be varied
from 0 ~ 50 Hz is used to change the speed of the blower. The
greater the input frequency the higher the speed of the blower
generated. An 8 inch pipe is used with ± 200-inch overall
length system. To investigate the fluctuation of flow profile
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along the pipeline, the meter run pipe was a 10L and 20L
(L=pipe diameter).
TUF constructed of six pairs of dual-ultrasonic transducers
module is displayed in Fig.3b. Wetted transducers are placed
with an angle 450 to the axial pipeline to guarantee the optimal
spread-spectrum ultrasonic and capable of reaching all
receivers on the other side. The used transducer has an
operating frequency of 40 KHz, with a diameter of 0.97 cm.
According to experiment, the sensing range of every
transducer is from 5 to 58 cm. For TUF itself, the distance
between the transmitter and receiver in the upstream and
downstream positions varied from 26 to 30 cm, so it is still
within the sensing range of the transducer. Meanwhile, the
handmade TUF viewed from the pipe cross-section is figure
out in Fig.3c
In operation, two microcontrollers are employed where
one had 18 and the other had 6 I/Os. The 18 I/Os are used to
activate all transmitters and for measuring tup, while the other
only serves to measure tdwn. The velocity in a specific area
from reconstructed profile from TUF is then compared with
USM (diametrical and midradius configuration) for different
path orientation (Fig. 4) only for 20L of meter run pipe.
Data acquisition system used in this study is different with
those used in reference [1] and [2] using a fan-beam mode.
The data are directly collected by a parallel beam projection
for every angle projection. This technique no longer requires
data grouping process based on parallel projections and angle
projection because the data have been clustered when the
acquisition process takes place. It is very useful to reduce the
computing time for data pre-processing.

TABLE I NUMERICALLY RECONTRUCTED PROFILES

Number of Pair Transducers

Theoritical Profiles
5 6 7 10

v̄
v̄=1.302 m/s = 1.270 m/s v̄ =1.271 m/s v̄ = 1.275 m/s v̄ = 1.273 m/s
P2 error=0.024 error=0.023 error=0.020 error=0.022

v̄=0.922 m/s v̄ =0.850 m/s v̄ = 0.863 m/s v̄ = 0.840 m/s v̄ = 0.861 m/s
P6 error=0.078 error=0.063 error=0.089 error=0.065

TUF with Dual-

2L Ultrasonic Transducer 10L & 20L

L
(a) D1 U1 Blower
D2

U6
U1 U2 AC motor drive
D1
D6 L D3
Note :
U2 U5 U3
L = 8 inch
D4

D2 U4
D5

U=Upstream
(b) U3 (c) D=Downstream

Fig.3. (a) Sketch of the experimental setup, TUF with dual-ultrasonic transducer in (b) along the pipeand (c) cross-section view

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 R
0.5
0.5R

R
0.5
R
0.5

R
0.5R

0.5
006001200
(a)
(a)

3009001500
(b)
(b)
Fig. 4.Different path orientation of (a) midradius and (b) diametrical Fig. 5.(a) The sequence for data acquisition, (b) parallel projection result after
configurations when measuring the airflow velocity double interpolation

Due to the limited number of transducers, only 8 parallel
projection data consisting of 6 experimental and 2 theoretical
data are obtained. Theoretical data are obtained based on the
theory of fluid mechanics, where the fluid velocity in the pipe
wall is always 0 ms-1. Meanwhile, we also have 6 different
orientations; 00, 300, ..., 1500, so there are 48 data for one
measurement process.
The data collection obtained by experiment cannot be
directly used to produce a flow profile, because its number is
too small; the acoustic paths do not occupy the same space,
and the angle projection is too large. To address these three
problems, we employ a double interpolation to create dummy
data, which are able to minimize distance of the parallel beam
projections as well as to obtain the angle projection at every
10. In a previous work reported in [1], the spline technique was
employed to produce projection data similar to Fig. 5b.
The data collection techniques based on the different
parallel beam projection and orientation angle are shown in
Fig. 5a, in which the sequence starts from i to vi. In the
experiment, the required time for one measurement process is
about 40ms. Meanwhile, to generate a flow profile with
201x201 pixel image, the required time is about 0.82s -1 404s
when a CPU 2.2 GHz processor with 2GB of memory and 32-
bit operating system is employed.
A. Results and analysis
The distribution and average air flow velocity in 10L and
20L sections of the pipe can be seen in Table II. By referring
to Table II, the greater the input frequency of the blower, the
greater the average speed of the air generated, and the greater
the meter run pipe, the lower the value of the air velocity. In
fact, the highest speed at 10L pipe disperses and is located
near the pipe wall. Meanwhile at the 20L pipe, the top speed

TABLE II. PROFILE RECONTRUCTION

Frequency Input of Blower(Hz)

The meter run pipe
No
of USM
36 45 50
a
1 10 L

v̄ =1.034 m/s v̄ = 2.057 m/s v̄ = 2.425 m/s

2 20 La

v̄ = 0.815 m/s v̄ = 1.603 m/s v̄ = 1.920 m/s

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 TABLE III. USM MIDRADIUS COMPARED WITH TUF VELOCITY IN EVERY PATH POSITION FOR 20L OF METER RUN PIPE
Orientation
F.Input
00 600 1200
of
Blower v̄ (m/s) Δv̄a v̄ (m/s) Δv̄ v̄ (m/s) Δv̄ v̄ (m/s) Δv̄ v̄ (m/s) Δv̄ v̄ (m/s) Δv̄
(%) (%) (%) (%) (%) (%)
(Hz) Pth.1 TUF Pth.2 TUF Pth.1 TUF Pth.2 TUF Pth.1 TUF Pth.2 TUF
36 0.743 0.843 13.45 0.545 0.543 0.444 0.682 0.663 2.753 0.450 0.539 19.62 0.683 0.706 3.368 0.682 0.684 0.355
45 1.729 1.842 6.517 1.262 1.180 6.529 1.763 1.691 4.056 0.970 1.109 14.29 1.915 1.860 2.910 1.631 1.644 0.780
50 1.919 2.097 9.283 1.371 1.409 2.783 1.923 1.854 3.561 1.745 1.715 1.736 2.150 1.909 11.21 1.757 1.821 3.655

TABLE IV. USM DIAMETRAL COMPARED WITH TUF VELOCITY IN EVERY PATH POSITION FOR 20L OF METER RUN PIPE
Frequency Orientation
Input of 300 900 1500
Blower v̄ (m/s) Δv̄ v̄ (m/s) Δv̄ v̄ (m/s) Δv̄
(Hz) Pthb TUF (%) Pth TUF (%) Pth TUF (%)
36 1.042 1.047 0.523 1.244 1.193 4.042 0.912 0.907 0.531
45 2.024 2.244 10.89 2.387 2.380 0.304 2.109 2.236 6.034
50 2.640 2.672 1.239 2.333 2.672 14.51 2.181 2.145 1.667

concentrates around the center pipe. The main reason for this
occurrence is the influence of friction at the wall of the pipe
that weakens the air velocity in that area. In contrast, there is
no friction in the central part of the pipe.
Flow profile of the 20L pipe looks asymmetry and the top
speed slightly shifts from the center pipe and gradually
decreases to the pipe edges. Although it is known theoretically
that the profile of the 20L pipe should be in a fully developed
flow and the highest speed must be in the center pipe. It
implies that, this condition is caused by the imperfection of
experimental set-up, such as an asymmetric transducer
installation, poor performance of the pump, and the presence
of a cavity between the pipe junction and the installed TUF.
Especially for the 20L pipe, specific area of the
reconstructed profile then is compared with the established
USM such as the diametric and midradius configurations
(Table III and IV). If both USMs are used as references, a
velocity difference (Δv̄) with TUF in the same position can be
calculated. The result shows that the value difference for every
path position and orientation of the midradius configuration
fluctuates from 0.355 to 99.62 %, meanwhile for the
diametrical configuration is from 0.304 to 14.51 %. This
investigation has revealed that the velocity profile
reconstructed from TUF is almost close and the same data
patterns to the measurement data of the conventional USM,
even though all of their acoustic paths do not coincide with the
TUF paths. In addition, the measurement result for every
orientation of both configurations are always different to each
other, this is caused by an asymmetric of the flow profile, as
displayed in Table II.
It should be stated that the average velocities obtained by
the experiment have not been compared with a standard
measurement tool; so that there is no justification that the
obtained measurement results are correct. However, results of
the numerical simulations prove that the used configuration
and reconstruction algorithm are true, because the generated
profile is in accordance with the theoretical flow profile.
V. CONCLUSION
Based on the simulation result, the TUF using six
transducers in the upstream and downstream positions is
capable of generating an image reconstruction that resembles
the simple and complex theoretical flow profiles. The
experimental result shows that the dual-ultrasonic transducers
has contributed in reducing the data collection time for about
40 ms, which is much shorter than the conventional method
performed in Ref. [2] of 160 ms. In addition, The air velocity
measured by acoustic paths of the diametral and midradius is
consistent with TUF in the same location, although all of their
acoustic paths do not coincide directly. Thus, it implies that
the velocity value in a specific location for the three
experiments (TUF, diametral and midradius USM) shows
similar trend within a pipe cross-section of the 20L pipe.
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