A new approach to laminar flowmeters

After studying the performance and characteristics of actual laminar flowmeters a new disposition for this type of sensors is proposed in such a way that the measurement errors introduced by the intrinsic nature of the device can be minimized. The preliminary study shows that the developing entry region introduces non-linearity effects in all these devices. These effects bring about not only errors, but also a change in the slope of the linear calibration respect of the Poiseuille relation. After a subsequent analysis on how these non-linearity errors can be reduced, a new disposition of this type of flowmeters is introduced. This device makes used of flow elements having pressure taps at three locations along its length and connected to three isolated chambers. In this way, the static pressure can be measured at three locations and contributed to by the pressure taps at the level of each chamber. Thus the linearization error is reduced with an additional advantage of producing a reduced pressure drop.