Study on the Influences of Multiple Parameters With Uncertainty in the Clamp-On Ultrasonic Flowmeter

For a clamp-on ultrasonic flowmeter based on transit-time differential method, the flow rate calculation model with flow velocity correction is established and verified by experiments carried out in a flow standard facility. Based on established flow rate calculation model, a systematic methodology incorporating the parametric uncertainty distribution is proposed to analyze the influences of multiple parameters with uncertainty on measurement error by establishing the sample-based stochastic model. Monte Carlo sampling (MCS) method is used to randomly select the value of each parameter from its prescribed Gaussian distribution and then combining them together as one sample, and the number of selected samples is determined by conducting stochastic convergence analysis of mean value and the standard deviation of input and output parameters. And finally the influence degrees of multiple parameters are analyzed and compared quantitatively on the same dimension to find out which parameters are influential and which are negligible. The results reveal the different influences of multiple parameters with uncertainty, which can be used as reference for performance improvement and measuring error analysis of the clamp-on ultrasonic flowmeter in industrial local measurement.