Simultaneous measurement of flow velocity and electrical conductivity of a liquid metal using an eddy current flow meter in combination with a look-up-table method

Eddy Current Flow Meters (ECFM) are inductive sensors that are commonly used to measure the local flow rate or flow velocity of liquid metals in the vicinity of the sensor. One disadvantage of the ECFM is, that the measured voltage signals depend on the magnetic Reynolds number i.e. they are not only depending on the flow velocity but also on the electrical conductivity of the liquid metal. For applications where the temperature (and therefore also the electrical conductivity) is fluctuating significantly, the ECFM has to be calibrated in order to be able to distinguish between the influence of the flow velocity and the temperature on the measured signals. In this paper we present a method that allows the simultaneous measurement of electrical conductivity and flow velocity by using a so called Look-Up-Table method. When using this method, there is no need to calibrate the ECFM.