Computational Study of a Target Fluidic Flowmeter

The computational studies on the flow structure, design and performance of a target fluidic flowmeter have been carried out. The computational challenge was to find a universal approach to study a wide range of flow regimes. To this end the Detached Eddy Simulation (DES) approach for unsteady flows was applied. The numerical technique enabled to accurately reproduced three dimensional flow structures in a target fluidic flowmeter. The signal analysis of the obtained results was conducted for a range of Reynolds numbers from laminar case up to 4000. The results show that a number of factors such as meter geometry and aspect ratio can influence the performance of the flow meter significantly. A minimum Reynolds number constraint for the measurements to be accurate was evaluated for various design parameters. The significance of using knife edges which influence boundary layer separation was also established. The experimental data, which were obtained for a prototype of flowmeter setup were used to validate numerical tools in the important area of low Reynolds number flows.