International Conference on Science, Technology Engineering and Management

Intelligent flow meter using swarm intelligence

Kalaiselvan.G1.
Assistant professor, Dept.of Electronics and
Instrumentation Engineering, Jeppiaar Engineering
College, Chennai, India 1

ABSTRACT: Adaptive flow meter calibration is design

using PSO trained ANN. This work objective is to model
an advanced flow measuring instrument using intelligent
algorithm. This paper elaborates the linearity range of
venturi and it extinguish the diverse flow meter
parameters.
Hence this paper deals with training of the weights of feed
forward neural network by using a hybrid algorithm which
associates particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm
and back-propagation (BP) algorithm(also known
asPSO–BP algorithm). In the priliminary stages of a global
search, the particle swarm optimization algorithm
converges hastily but around global optimum, the search
process becomes delayed.
On the contrary,using the gradient descending method
faster convergent speed and higher convergent accuracy
can be attained around global optimum. This hybrid
algorithm can make use of PSOA strong global searching
ability as well as BP strong local searching ability . The
overall system can be linearised ,

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made independent of venturi - pipe diameter ratio, density

of the liquid and temperature by adding pso trained ANN
block to the data conversion unit in cascade thus avoiding
calibration repetition when any or a combination of the
liquid and parameters are changed

Keywords: Flow Meter, Linearization, Feed forward

Neural Network, Swarm Intelligence.

I.INTRODUCTION
Flow controls plays major role in power plant
industries, oil and natural gas industries and food and
pharmaceutical industries in controlling many parameters.
Flow control is achieved using flow meters. Flow
measuring instruments derives its principle from
Bernoulli’s theorem.
The high sensitivity and ruggedness of Venturi makes
it widely applicable whereas the problem of offset, elevated
non-linear response characteristics, dependence of output
on the venturi- pipe diameter ratio, liquid density and
temperature have restricted its use and further imposing
difficulties. To overcome the difficulties caused by
nonlinear response characteristics of the venturi, several
techniques have been recommended which are monotonous
and time consuming. Further, the calibration process needs
to be repeated every time the diameter ratio or liquid is
changed. The change in liquid temperature heightens the
problem of linearity of a venturi as the output is dependent
on temperature and flow rate of the liquid. To overcome the
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above difficulties, this paper suggests a smart flow

measurement technique which uses artificial neural
network. This network is to educate the system to widen
linearity range thus making the result independent of ratio
between venturi – pipe diameter, liquid density and
temperature.

II.VENTURI FLOWMETER

Volumetric flow rate can be measured using a venturi flow

meter(shown in Fig. 1).

It uses the Bernoulli's principle which gives a association

between the pressure and the velocity of the fluid. Increases
in the velocity, decreases the pressure and vice versa. The
nozzle is usually in a pipe in which fluid flows in the
venturi is a tapered structure.The fluid on reaching the
venturi nozzle,is forced to converge to pass through the tiny
hole.
Venacontracta point is the point that occurs downstream of
venturi nozzle, where the maximum convergence happens
And hence the flow of the liquid changes the velocity and
the pressure . Once the liquid crosses the venacontracta, it
inflate thus changing the velocity and pressure changes
once again. The volumetric and mass flow rates can be
obtained from Bernoulli's equation by measuring the
difference in pressure of the fluid in the normal pipe section
and at the venacontracta.

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Where
Cd – Discharge coefficient
Ab – Area of the flowmeter cross section
β – Ratio of Db to Da
Pa – Pressure at study flow
Pb – Pressure at vena-contracta
ρ – Density of liquid

Figure.1 Venturi flow meter

The effect of temperature on the density [17-18] is shown

by

Where
ρt – specific density of liquid at temperature ‘t oC’
ρto – specific density of liquid at temperature ‘to oC’
Pt – pressure at temperature ‘t oC’
Pto – pressure at temperature ‘to oC’
k – Bulk modulus of liquid
α – temperature coefficient of liquid

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The block diagram representation of the proposed

instrument

III.METHODOLOGY

The block diagram Fig.2 representation of the proposed

instrument.

Figure.2 Block Diagram

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The PSO formulae define each particle as a potential

solution to a problem in a D-dimensional space, with the ith
particle represented as . Each particle also
remembers its previous best position, designated as pbest,
and its velocity (Carlisle and
Dozier 2000). In each generation, the velocity of each
particle is updated, being pulled in the direction of its own
previous best position (pi) and the best of all positions (pg)
reached by all particles until the preceding generation. The
original PSO formulae developed by Kennedy and Eberhart
were modified by Shi and Eberhart 1998 with the
introduction of an inertia parameter, , that was shown
empirically to improve the overall performance of PSO.
(1)

(2)
where rand1() and rand2() are samples from a uniform
random number generator, k represents a relative time
index, c1 is a weight determining the impact of the previous
best solution and c2 is the weight on the global best
solution’s impact on particle velocity. For more details of
the particle swarm optimization algorithm the reader is
referred to (Veeramachaneni et al. 2003, 2007).Generally,
in population-based search optimization methods,
considerably high diversity is necessary during the early
part of the search to allow the full range of the search
space. On the other hand, during the latter part of the
search, when the algorithm is converging to the optimal

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solution, fine-tuning of the solutions is important to find the

global optima efficiently (Ratnaweera et al. 2004).

IV.HYBRID PSO–BP ALGORITHM

By optimizing PSO with BP algorithms PSO-BP algorithm

obtained. The strong ability of the PSO algorithm makes it
possible to find global optimistic result, alike GA
algorithm, on the other hand it has a disadvantage very
slow search around global optimum . The ability of BP
algorithm, to find local optimistic result is high, and the
ability to determine the global optimistic result is weak.
Hence this paper formulates a new hybrid algorithm
PSO–BP by associating the PSO with the BP
. The central concept for this hybrid algorithm is that at the
beginning stage of optimum search, the PSO is employed
to hasten the speed of the training. the searching process is
switched to gradient descending searching according to this
heuristic knowledge When the fitness function value has
not changed for some generations, or value changed is
smaller than a predefined number,.

Like the APSO algorithm when iterative generation

intensifies the parameter w reduces steadily. The selection
strategy for the inertial weight w is executed by reducing w
linearly in the initial stages and non- linearly in the later
stages. With the help of recurrent experiments maxgen1
parameter is adjusted to an appropriate value and the

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search around the global optimum Pg is done using

adaptive gradient descending method .
In this paper, we adopted the subsequent approach for
learning rate

where g is learning rate, k, g0 are constants, epoch is a

variable representing iterative times. The reducing speed of
learning rate is controlled by tuning k and g0. The weights
of the feedforward neural network with two layered
structures is evolved using three sorts of algorithm.If there
are n nodes in the input layer then hidden layer will consist
of H hidden nodes and the output layer will consist of n
output nodes. Fig. 3 shows the structure of neural network
with a two layered feedforward mechanism.The figure 3,
shows a corresponding fitness function.
Assuming that the hidden transfer function is sigmoid
function, and the output transfer function is a linear
activation function. From Fig. 3, it can be seen that the
output of the jth hidden node is:

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Fig:3 Two-Layered Feed forward Neural Network

Structure

where n is the number of the input node, wij is the

connection weight from the ith node of input layer to the jth
node of hidden layer, hi is the threshold of the jth hidden
layer unit; xi is the ith input. sj is the weight input sum in
hidden,

The output of the kth output layer is:

where wkj is the connection weight from the jth hidden

node to the kth output node, hk is the threshold of the kth
output unit. The learning error E can be computed by the
following formulation:

where q is the number of total training samples, yki_ Cki is

the desired output and actual output error of the ith output
unit when the kth instructing sample is used for training.
The fitness function of the ith training sample is defined as

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In neural network with feed forward strategy When the

PSO algorithm is used in evolving weights, every particle
denotes a set of weights and there are three encoding
strategy for every particle,which is explained in detail as
following.
The shortcomings examined in the initial section
were overcome by adding an Neural Network with
Artificial Intelligence(ANN) model in cascade with data
converter unit. This model is designed using the toolbox in
the neural network of MATLAB. Once the weights are
calculated, verification is done to check whether mean
square error (MSE) is less than estimate error threshold
(Th) for at least 10 repeated readings. If the preceeding
requirement is fulfilled the whole model is saved, else the
iteration for updates of ANN parameters continue till it
reaches the maximum number of iteration and then the
model is saved with caution that desired performance has
not reached.

V.RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

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Initially, only one hidden layer is chosen and training,

validation and testing is completed. . Since the value of R
and MSE were not near the expected values, number of
hidden layers is increased by one more and training,
validation and testing are done again. This continuous till
an appropriate number of hidden layer is formed out which
results in acceptable values of R an MSE.

Table 1: Summarizes the network model

Optimized parameters of the

neural network model
Training
90
base(60%)
Databa
Validation
se 30
base(20%)
Test base(20%) 30
1st layer 8
No of
2nd layer 7
neuron
3rd layer 7
s in
4th layer 8
1st layer tansig
Transf
2nd layer tansig
er
3rd layer tansig
functio
4th layer tansig
n of
Output layer tansig

Table 2: PSO parameters

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PSO
Parameter
Value or Range
Initial Weight 0.5
Final Weight -
c1 2
c2 2
r1 [0, 1]
r2 [0, 1]

With the details mentioned the network is trained,

validated and tested. Table 1 and 2 summarizes the various
parameters of the Hybrid ANN-PSO model. The result
shows the structure of the neural network considered in the
present case.

Table 3.The comparison of the performances of the

PSO–BPA and BPA

The BPA The BP–PSOA

Hidden
training training
unit
CPU CPU
number Error Error
time time
29.8 14.9
`3 8.4e_004 4.2e_004
s s
35.3 16.7
4 8.9e_004 6.5e_005
s s
39.5 18.9
5 8.3e_004 7.4e_005
s s
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48.6 19.4
6 4.3e_004 6.9e_005
s s
49.9 21.3
7 7.8e_004 5.74e_005
s s

VI.CONCLUSION

Smart sensors should be capable of providing accurate

readout, calibration and auto-compensation for the
nonlinear influences of the environmental parameters on its
characteristics. The proposed PSO-ANN-based models may
be applied to flow sensors to incorporate intelligence in
terms of auto-calibration and to mitigate the nonlinear
dependency of their response characteristics on the
environmental parameters. The proposed PSO-ANN is
taught, confirmed and tested with the simulated data. Once
the training is over, for the system with venturi nozzle,it is
subjected to various test inputs corresponding to different
flow rate at a particular diameter ratio, liquid density and
temperature all within the specified range. The outputs of
system with PSO-ANN are shows better than ANN model
in corresponding to various input flow rate at different
values of diameter ratio, liquid density and temperature.

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The proposed method corrects the errors by reducing

the number of iteration, preserves quality of flow meter and
yields better performance in finding the best solution or
near best solutions.

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