Water Ultrasonic Flow Metering

To engineer ultrasonic transducers (or devices incorporating ultrasonic transducers), able to simultaneously capture multiple high quality data streams, across pressure, temperature, (accurate) time of flight, and others which can be identified as the project progresses.

The objectives are broad, and they can be refined for the benefit of the student. For example, some technical scoping / literature review will be vital in the early stages, and the student can study how to optimise transducers to reduce crosstalk or interference with other transducers or structures inside the measurement environment.

1. Design and fabricate new ultrasonic measurement transducer concepts for measurement in water with different physical characteristics (such as pressure, temperature, and quality). One option may be a design based on the flexural ultrasonic transducer.

2. Investigate and understand the influence of different environmental parameters, such as pressure and temperature, on the dynamic performance of the ultrasonic transducers. Steps to mitigate undesirable influences will be proposed.

3. Characterise and understand the impact of the new transducers on high performance (for example with respect to accuracy) flow measurement. This objective will require the development and promotion of new signal processing strategies depending on the environmental fluid.

4. Innovate solutions for capturing physical properties of a system, through fluctuations in the dynamic performance of the transducers. It may be appropriate to consider advanced materials (phase transforming and metamaterials) here - they might provide unique opportunities to capture other data previously not possible, and it would be interesting if a cost-effective (or practical / realistic) solution for incorporating such materials could be proposed by the student.