Title

The Performance of Crossed-Vane Swirl Meters

Author Info

H. L. Lee, Stone & Webster Engineering Corporation
William W. Durgin, Worcester Polytechnic InstituteFollow

Recommended Citation

Published in Vortex Flows: Presented at ASME Winter Annual Meeting: Chicago, IL, November 16, 1980, pages 57-64. Copyright 1980 American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME). Publisher website: http://store.asme.org/.

NOTE: At the time of publication, the author William Durgin was not yet affiliated with Cal Poly.

Abstract

Vortimeters consisting of vanes rotating about pipe axes are frequently used to indicate the swirl present in pump columns and feedlines from sumps and in piping networks. Since the design of such devices varies widely, the study described herein was undertaken to identify salient design parameters and to evaluate a device designed according to information available in the literature.

An apparatus which could produce known amounts of angular momentum in a pipeline was verified by direct measurement of axial and tangential velocity profiles. By using the assumption that a vortimeter, with vanes spanning only the rotational core, responded to an equivalent solid rotational core, an expression was developed relating the angular velocity to the angular momentum. Comparison of the angular velocity which the swirl generator should produce if angular momentum were conserved to that measured by the vortimeter showed excellent agreement.

Disciplines

Mechanical Engineering