Design of Three-Dimensional Characteristics of Perforated Plate for Liquid Nitrogen Balanced Flowmeter

Abstract

To design the two-dimensional structural parameters of the core throttling component, i.e., the perforated plate for a liquid nitrogen (LN2) balanced flowmeter, this paper presented an orthogonal experiment scheme with three parameters, three factors, and three interactions, combined with the three-dimensional CFD numerical simulation. The constructed mixture multi-phase flow numerical model considers the complex cavitation effect of LN2 with a thermal effect. A DN40 balanced flowmeter and an LN2 flowrate test setup based on a standard flowmeter were constructed, and the measured flowrate data were used to evaluate the CFD model. Based on the optimized two-dimensional structure and the validated numerical model, the influence of the three-dimensional thickness of the perforated plate on the flow and pressure drop coefficient was investigated. It was found that there are two throttling forms as the thickness increases, resulting in two pressure-changing characteristics. The formation mechanism was explained by analyzing the turbulence intensity distribution. Finally, the final flow coefficient, pressure drop coefficient, and upper limit of measurement due to the cavitation were analyzed and obtained. The results provide a feasible parameter design method for the cryogenic balanced flow meters.

Keywords

• balanced flowmeter
• perforated plate
• CFD
• orthogonal experiment
• cryogenic cavitation