Affiliation:
1. Life Quality Engineering Interest Group, School of Chemical and Environmental Engineering Soochow University Suzhou 215031 China
2. Biomedical Engineering Group, School of Medicine Tsinghua University Beijing 100084 China
Abstract
AbstractLarge deformation of an elastic hollow ellipsoid may be used as the mechanism of a flowmeter. It is seen as being inspired by human biology, when passing through fluid internally. The investigation on this potential was carried out where simply the relationships among pressure drop across an ellipsoid, deformation, flowrate and fluid viscosity were obtained. The elastic hollow ellipsoid was made from Silicone, which has a long axis of 0.05 m, a short axis of 0.03 m, and a wall thickness of 3.5 × 10−4 ± 4.6 × 10−5 m. A monotonic relationship between fluid flowrate and a representative diameter of the ellipsoid was found. Sodium carboxymethyl cellulose (CMC) aqueous solutions were used as a more viscous media so the effect of viscosity was explored. Unlike the firm result on flowrate gauging, it was inconclusive on differentiating the effect of viscosity. When the inlet and the outlet of the fluid were switched over, the geometrical expansion of the ellipsoid was found to be sensitive to the small spatial variation of wall thickness (a non‐uniformity caused by manufacturing limitation). Nevertheless, this work has demonstrated an interesting flowmeter and further explorations on viscosity effect may be warranted.
Subject
Waste Management and Disposal,Renewable Energy, Sustainability and the Environment,General Chemical Engineering
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