Kenji Kawashima

Research Associate,
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Tokyo Metropolitan College of Technology,
1-10-40 Higashi-Ohi,
Shinagawa-ku,
Tokyo 140-0011, Japan
Instantaneous Flow Rate
Measurement of Ideal Gases
Toshiharu Kagawa
Professor In this paper, a chamber called an ‘‘Isothermal Chamber’’ was developed. The isother-
mal chamber can almost realize isothermal condition due to larger heat transfer area and
heat transfer coefficient by stuffing steel wool in it. Using this chamber, a simple method
Toshinori Fujita to measure flow rates of ideal gases was developed. As the process during charge or
Research Associate discharge is almost isothermal, instantaneous flow rates charged into or discharged from
the chamber can be obtained measuring only pressure in the chamber. The steady and the
Precision and Intelligence Laboratory, unsteady flow rate of air were measured by the proposed method, and the effectiveness of
Tokyo Institute of Technology, the method was demonstrated. 关S0022-0434共00兲00301-4兴
4259 Nagatsuda-chou,
Midori-ku, Yokohama-shi,
Kanagawa-prefecture,
226-0026, Japan

1 Introduction 2 Flow Rate Measurement Using Isothermal

In industry, flow rate is one of the most important quantity
whose measurement requires high accuracy and high dynamic re-
sponse. The principles of flow rate measurement can be divided
into direct and indirect measurements. A number of methods have
been proposed 关1,2兴, but most of them are indirect measurements.
Therefore, the measured value obtained by those methods must
have been calibrated by comparing it with the direct measure-
ments. As a result, the accuracy of measurements depended on the
direct measurement.
There are two methods in the direct velocity measurement of
gases. One is weight procedures 关3兴 and the other is volumetric
procedures 关4兴. Both methods require large equipment. Therefore,
measurement is not so easy. In addition, the effectiveness of these
methods on the unsteady flow rate measurement has not been
examined. Therefore, there is no effective and simple method for
testing the dynamic characteristic of flowmeters.
In this paper, a chamber called an Isothermal Chamber was
developed. Then, we propose a simple method to measure instan-
taneous flow rates of ideal gases using this chamber. The isother-
mal chamber can almost realize isothermal condition due to large
heat transfer area and heat transfer coefficient by stuffing steel
wool in it. As the process during charge or discharge remains
almost isothermal, instantaneous flow rate could be obtained mea-
suring only pressure in the chamber. The idea to realize isother-
mal condition by increasing the heat transfer area was proposed
by Otis 关5兴, and it was applied to reduce energy consumption in
accumulators. However, the idea has not been applied to flow rate
measurements.
At first, we explain the principle of the proposed method. Sec-
ond, the characteristic of the isothermal chamber is examined by
experiments. Then, the steady and the unsteady flow rate of air is
measured by the proposed method. Finally, we confirm the effec-
tiveness and the simplicity of the proposed method using experi-
ments.
Contributed by the Dynamic Systems and Control Division for publication in the
JOURNAL OF DYNAMIC SYSTEMS, MEASUREMENT, AND CONTROL. Manuscript
received by the Dynamic Systems and Control Division May 6, 1996. Associate
Technical Editor: R. S. Chandran.
Chamber
The principle of the proposed method is as follows: the state
equation of compressible fluids in a chamber can be written as
PV⫽W R¯␪ (1)
The following equation is derived by differentiating Eq. 共1兲:
dP d¯␪
V ⫽GR¯␪ ⫹W R (2)
dt dt
If the state of air in the chamber while charging or discharging
remains isothermal, the equation obtained from Eq. 共2兲 is
V dP
G⫽ (3)
R ␪ a dt
It is clear from Eq. 共3兲 that if the volume of the isothermal cham-
ber V and the room temperature ␪ a is known, we can obtain the
mass flow rate G by measuring the pressure and the differentiated
pressure. Then, the mass flow rate G is converted to the volumet-
ric flow rate Q on the standard condition by the conversion factor
k:
Q⫽kG (4)
3 Characteristics of Isothermal Chamber
3.1 Experimental Apparatus and Procedure. It is very
important to realize the isothermal condition in the proposed
method. Therefore, we investigated characteristics of the isother-
mal chamber first. We measured pressure and temperature re-
sponses of the chamber during discharge and charge. Dehumidi-
fied air was used in the experiments.
The average temperature during discharge or charge was mea-
sured as follows 关6兴: stop the solenoid valve at the time we want
to know the temperature ¯␪ (t). Measure the pressure at that time
P(t) and the pressure when it becomes stable P ⬁ using a pressure
gauge. When the pressure becomes stable, the temperature in the
chamber recovers to the room temperature. Hence, we can mea-
sure the average temperature at the time t using the Law of
Charles:

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 Fig. 1 Experimental apparatus for the temperature measure-
ment „during charging…

Fig. 3 Temperature responses during discharge

Fig. 2 Experimental apparatus for the temperature measure-

ment „during discharging…
is clear from Fig. 3 that by stuffing the steel wool, isothermal
condition is almost realized. The temperature drop is 35 K in the
Table 1 Specification of chambers normal chamber, but it is only 3 K in the isothermal chamber.

m 关kg兴 ⌽ 关␮m兴
3.2.2 Effect of Diameters of Materials. We also investigated
V 0 ⫻10⫺3 关 m3兴 Ar material
the effect of diameter of the materials stuffed in the chamber. The
tank-0 1.02 - 0.7 - - average temperature was measured while air was discharged from
tank-1 1.02 0.31 0.7 steel 25 tank-1 and tank-2. The initial pressure was set at 542 kPa and the
tank-2 1.02 0.37 0.7 copper 100 cylindrical restriction whose diameter is 1.5 mm was used. The
tank-3 3.02 0.45 0.8 steel 50
tank-4 3.02 0.45 2.0 steel 50 heat capacity of the material stuffed in tank-1 and tank-2 were
almost the same.
Experimental results are shown in Fig. 4. The dotted line in the
lower figure of Fig. 4 shows temperature response assuming that
the whole heat generated by the expansion of air was transfered to
P共 t 兲
¯␪ 共 t 兲 ⫽ ␪ (5) the material in the chamber. Even the pressure response and the
P⬁ a heat capacity is almost the same in tank-1 and tank-2, the tem-
By changing the time to stop discharge or charge, the average perature drop is smaller in tank-1. The temperature drop of both
temperature at any time could be measured. This method is called chambers is larger than the dotted line, which means the heat
the ‘‘stop method.’’ The errors of this method are considered to be capacity of the material has not been made full use of. Therefore,
less than 0.3 K. to realize the isothermal condition, it is most important to make
The experimental apparatus for the stop method is shown in the heat transfer area larger. Stuffed materials are different be-
Figs. 1 and 2. Figure 1 shows the case when air is charged into the
chamber and Fig. 2 shows the case when air is discharged from
the chamber. Charge or discharge was done through cylindrical
restrictions. To investigate the relationship between the speed of
the pressure change and the temperature change, two cylindrical
restrictions were used whose diameters are 1.0 mm and 1.5 mm.
Moreover, to investigate the effect of the mass of the stuffed
material and the shape of isothermal chambers, experiments were
performed using chambers listed in Table 1.
Tank-0 is a normal chamber and the other chambers are isother-
mal chambers. Steel wool is stuffed as much as possible into the
isothermal chambers. Here, the material stuffed in the chamber
might act as a flow resistance which causes pressure distribution
in the chamber. However, the volume of material is less than 4%
compared with that of the chamber. Measuring the pressure at
both sides of the chamber, we confirmed that there is no appre-
ciable pressure loss in the chambers.

3.2 Results and Discussion

3.2.1 Comparison Between Normal and Isothermal Chamber.
Figure 3 shows the experimental responses of pressure and tem-
perature while air was discharged from tank-0 and tank-1. The
initial pressure was set at 592 关kPa兴 and the cylindrical restriction Fig. 4 Temperature responses during discharge „a… tempera-
whose diameter is 1.5 mm was used. The upper figure shows ture response assuming that the whole heat generated by the
pressure curves and the lower figure shows temperature curves. It expansion of air use transferred to the material

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Fig. 5 Relationship between the shape of chambers and tem-
perature responses
tween tank-1 and tank-2. The difference between the temperature
response is not considered because the thermal conductivity of
both materials is higher than that of air.
3.2.2 Effect of Aspect Ratio of Chambers. The relationship
between the aspect ratio of chambers and temperature responses
was examined during charge using tank-3 and tank-4. The initial
pressure was set at 542 kPa and the cylindrical restrictions with
diameter 1.0 mm and 1.5 mm were used. Results are shown in
Fig. 5. It is clear from Fig. 5 that the temperature change becomes
larger as the pressure change becomes faster, but the shape of the
chamber has no effect on the condition. We confirmed that the
same phenomenon is seen during discharge also.
From the experimental results, it becomes clear that the isother-
mal condition could almost be realized by stuffing steel wool in a
normal chamber. As the condition in isothermal chambers is gov-
erned by heat transfer areas and the aspect ratio of chambers has
no effect on the condition, we conclude that the heat conduction
rules the phenomena. Therefore, if the diameter of the steel wool
is fixed, the characteristic of the isothermal chamber can be evalu-
ated by the mass of the steel wool per volume of the chamber.
5 Steady Flow Rate Measurement
5.1 Experimental Apparatus and Procedure. The experi-
mental apparatus for the steady flow rate measurement is shown in
Fig. 1. Since the volume of the chamber could be a source of
error, it was measured carefully by charging a known volume air
and measuring the pressure rise. The isothermal chamber used in
the flow rate measurement was tank-1 detailed in Table 1, because
the chamber could mostly realize the isothermal condition. A
semiconductor pressure gauge was used with measurement error
less than 0.1% and a resolution of 0.05 kPa. Nylon tubes were
used to connect the elements. The room temperature was mea-
sured by an alcohol thermometer. The steady flow rate is caused
by charging air into the isothermal chamber through a restriction
under choke condition.
The procedure is as follows: at first, the pressure in the isother-
mal chamber was set at atmospheric pressure. Then, opening the
solenoid valve, we started the pressure measurement. The mea-
sured pressure was taken into a personal computer through an AD
converter. The sampling time of the measurements was 20 ms.
The measured pressure was smoothed by the moving average
method using ten points, and the data was differentiated numeri-
cally with five points. Then, the flow rate Q could be obtained
from Eq. 共3兲.
On the other hand, the flow rate could be measured from the
discharge coefficient of the restriction. If the discharge coefficient
C d is given, the flow rate on the choking condition is given by
P sA
Q r ⫽0.685C d k (8)
冑R ␪ a
The restriction used in this experiment was a critical sonic venturi
nozzle whose discharge coefficient is given with a maximum error
of 0.15% by the National Research Laboratory of Metrology of
Japan. Thus, we confirmed the effectiveness of the proposed
method by comparing Q with Q r . By changing the supply pres-
sure, we measured several flow rates.
5.2 Results and Discussion. Figure 6 shows the pressure
curves and the flow rates of the experimental results. The experi-
ment was done for four flow rates. Cases 1 to 4 correspond to
supply pressures of 542, 444, 346, and 248 kPa, respectively. The

4 Measurement Errors
If the isothermal condition is perfectly realized during air
charge or discharge by the isothermal chamber, we can measure
the flow rate with high accuracy. However, the temperature
changes a little as shown in the previous section. Therefore, we
cannot avoid the measurement error owing to the temperature
change even if the volume of the chamber and the room tempera-
ture are measured accurately.
The flow rate G 0 , involving the temperature change in the
chamber, is obtained from Eq. 共2兲 as

V dP W d¯␪
G 0⫽ ⫺ (6)
R¯␪ dt ¯␪ dt
The ratio of flow rates obtained by the proposed method Q and the
flow rate Q 0 is given as follows using Eqs. 共3兲, 共4兲, and 共6兲:
Q 1

冉 冒 冊
⫽ (7)
Q0 ␪a P d¯␪ dP
1⫺
¯␪ ¯␪ dt dt
It is clear from this equation that the temperature change intro-
duces the error which makes the measured flow rate larger than Fig. 6 Experimental results of the steady flow rate measure-
the real value. ment

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 upper figure shows the pressure curves and the lower figure shows change. Though, using the isothermal chamber, the temperature
the flow rates. As the pressure increases sharply, the flow rates drop is believed to be less than 3 K which introduces only 0.5%
were kept steady. error.
It is clear from the lower figure that the proposed method is
useful and effective, because both flow rates Q and Q r show good 6.2 Results and Discussion. Figure 8 shows the experimen-
agreement. The small difference seen for cases 1 and 2 is due to tal results at 5.0 关Hz兴. The upper figure shows the pressure curves
the temperature change in the chamber. Since the temperature and the displacement of the valve. The lower figure shows the
change becomes larger as the pressure change become larger, case flow rates. Q and Q s are in good agreement.
1 and case 2 showed some difference. The difference is less than Figure 9 shows the experimental result at 40 Hz. In Fig. 9, Q
1 percent. These results indicate that using the isothermal chamber and Q s show good agreement on the whole, but Q is little larger
with 0.25 ␮m diameter 300 kg/m3 steel wool, the flow rate can be than Q s especially at the peak flow rate. The difference is 5 per-
measured within 1 percent using the proposed method with pres- cent at the most. This is considered to be due to temperature drop
sure changes less than 60 kPa/s. in the chamber. Note that the phase shows very good agreement.
If we assume the discharge to be polytropic, the phase would
not show any delay even in a normal chamber. However, it is
6 Unsteady Flow Rate Measurement known that the discharge of air from the chamber is not always a
polytropic process 关7,8兴. Therefore, the phase might be delayed in
6.1 Experimental Apparatus and Procedure. Figure 7 a normal chamber. We examined the flow rate measured using Eq.
shows the experimental apparatus used in the unsteady flow rate 共3兲 using a normal chamber which was obtained by removing the
measurement. The same chamber used in the steady flow rate steel wool from the isothermal chamber. The result at 40 Hz is
measurement was used in this experiment for frequencies less shown in Fig. 10. We can see a large discrepancy in the phase. Of
than 10 Hz. Since the pressure amplitude becomes smaller as the course, the gain shows a big difference due to the temperature
frequency become larger, a 2.0⫻10⫺4 m3 chamber was used for change.
frequencies above 10 Hz. The mass of the steel wool per volume Comparing the results of Fig. 9 and Fig. 10, the effectiveness of
and the material used were the same as those of tank-1 in Table 1. the isothermal chamber on the unsteady flow rate measurement
A servo valve was used to generate the unsteady flow rate. The
spool displacement of the valve could be measured as a voltage
from 0 to 10 V.
The procedure used for the measurement is as follows: First, air
compressed at 490 kPa was charged into the isothermal chamber
and the hand valve was shut. Then, opening the solenoid valve,
we discharged the air in the chamber to the atmosphere through
the servo valve. At this time, the servo valve was oscillated in a
sinusoidal fashion by a function generator. Therefore, the flow
rate become unsteady and oscillations occurred.
The experiment was performed at several frequencies. The pro-
cessing of the pressure data was the same as the steady flow rate
measurement except that a low pass filter was used instead of a
moving average. The cut-off frequency of the filter was set at
three times the frequency of the phenomenon.
The flow rate calculated from the pressure and the displacement
of the valve was also used for comparison. The calculation is as
follows: the relationship between the displacement of the valve
and the flow rate on the steady condition, i.e., static characteristics
of the valve, was measured by the flow meter in advance. Then
the displacement of the valve was used to evaluate the effective
area S e ( v ). Accordingly, measuring the pressure in the chamber P Fig. 8 Unsteady flow rate measurement with the isothermal
and the displacement of the valve v , we can calculate the flow chamber „ f Ä5 †Hz‡…
rate Q s under choking conditions from

Q s ⫽KS e 共 v 兲 P 冑 273
␪
(9)

In Eq. 共9兲, the temperature is assumed to be the room temperature.

Thus, Q s includes the measurement error due to the temperature

Fig. 7 Experimental apparatus for the unsteady flow rate mea- Fig. 9 Unsteady flow rate measurement with isothermal cham-
surement ber „ f Ä40 †Hz‡…

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 Acknowledgments
We are grateful to Dr. S. Nakao of the National Research Labo-
ratory of Metrology of Japan who provided the critical sonic
nozzle.

Nomenclature
A ⫽ cross-sectional area of nozzles 关 m2兴
Ar ⫽ aspect ratio of chambers
Cd ⫽ discharge coefficient of nozzles
G ⫽ mass flow rate 关kg/s兴
k ⫽ conversion factor 关m3/kg兴
K ⫽ proportionality constant
P ⫽ pressure in the chamber 关Pa兴
Ps ⫽ supply pressure 关Pa兴
Q ⫽ flow rate obtained from the proposed method 关m3/s兴
Qr ⫽ flow rate obtained from the nozzle 关m3/s兴
Qs ⫽ flow rate obtained from the valve 关m3/s兴
R ⫽ gas constant 关J/共kg•K兲兴
Fig. 10 Unsteady flow rate measurement with the normal Se ⫽ effective area of valves 关m2兴
chamber „ f Ä40 †Hz‡…
V0 ⫽ volume of the chamber 关m3兴
W ⫽ mass in the chamber 关kg兴
␪a ⫽ room temperature 关K兴
¯␪ ⫽ average temperature in the chamber 关K兴
becomes clear. Since the dynamic responses of most air flowme-
ters are less than 40 Hz, this method is applicable for measuring ␾ ⫽ average diameter of the material 关m兴
the dynamic characteristic measurement of air flowmeters which
is difficult and has no effective method at present. References
关1兴 Miller, R. W., 1989, Flow Measurement Engineering Handbook, 2nd edition,
McGraw-Hill, New York.
关2兴 Scott, R. W. W., 1982, Development in Flow Measurement, Applied Science,
7 Closure London.
关3兴 ISO Standard 5024, 1981, Petroleum Liquids and Gases-Measurement-
The following have been accomplished as a result of this study: Standard Reference Conditions, ISO, Geneva.
关4兴 ISO/DP 8959/2, 1986, Measurement of Gas Flow-Rate Volumetric Method,
1 The isothermal chamber, which can almost realize the iso- part 2, Bell Provers, ISO Standard, Doc. 442E, ISO TC30, Geneva.
thermal condition by stuffing steel wool, was developed. It be- 关5兴 Otis, D. R., 1970, ‘‘Thermal Damping in Gas-Filled Composite Materials Dur-
came clear from the experiments that the characteristic of the ing Impact Loading,’’ ASME J. Appl. Mech., 37, pp. 38–44.
关6兴 Kagawa, T. and Shimizu, M. 1988, ‘‘Heat Transfer Effect on the Dynamic of
chamber is given by the mass of the steel wool per unit volume of Pneumatic RC Circuit,’’ 2nd International Symposium on Fluid Control Mea-
the chamber. surement and Visualization.
2 A method to measure the gas flow rate from the pressure 关7兴 Pourmovahed, A., and Otis, D. R., 1984, ‘‘Effects of Thermal Damping on the
change in an isothermal chamber was proposed. Dynamic Response of a Hydraulic Loading,’’ ASME J. Dyn. Syst., Meas.,
Control, 106, pp. 21–26.
3 The proposed method has been shown to be effective not 关8兴 Kagawa, T., 1985, ‘‘Heat Transfer Effects on the Frequency Response of a
only at steady state but also for unsteady oscillating flow rate up Pneumatic Nozzle Flapper,’’ ASME J. Dyn. Syst., Meas., Control, 107, pp.
to 40 Hz by experiments. 332–336.

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