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January 2009

Coriolis meters use flow vibrations

The global flowmeter market tracks at nearly $5 billion a year in revenue. One of the two fastest growing
segments of this market is Coriolis (ultrasonic is the other).
Flowmeter growth is strongest in the oil and gas industry, and with crude oil trading between $50 and $150
per barrel over the last year, measurement accuracy and reliability are most important. That is where Coriolis
flowmeters come in. They are very popular for custody transfer of petroleum liquids.
Technology of the gods
The first commercial meters appeared in the
1970s. They measure mass flow directly with
high accuracy and rangeability.
A French engineer and mathematician,
Gustave-Gaspard Coriolis, first described the
Coriolis force in the early 1800s. It is an
effect of motion on a rotating body and is of
paramount importance to meteorology,
ballistics, and oceanography.
Whereas pressure differences tend to push
winds in straight paths, winds follow curved
paths across the Earth. In 1835, Coriolis first
gave a mathematical description of the
effect, giving his name to the Coriolis force.
While air begins flowing from high to low
pressure, the Earth rotates under it, thus
making the wind appear to follow a curved
path.
In the Northern Hemisphere, the wind turns
to the right of its direction of motion. In the
Southern Hemisphere, it turns to the left. The
Coriolis force is zero at the equator.
This force results from acceleration acting on
a mass, and anyone who walks radially
outward on a moving merry-go-round
experiences the force. A person must lean
toward or direct the mass of his or her
moving body against the force that the
Coriolis acceleration produces.
If we know the force (F) acting on the body, the velocity (V) of the body, and the angular velocity ( ) of the
platform, we can calculate the persons mass (M).

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By applying this phenomenon to mass-flow measurement, we create a Coriolis mass flowmeter. Indeed, there
are several types of meters leveraging the Coriolis Effect. One straight-up mass-flow device has rotors
containing metal vanes that form several channels.
This gadget operates at a constant angular velocity per an external power source. Any particle of fluid
traveling through the radial channel with velocity V will experience the Coriolis force, resulting in torque
acting in the plane of rotation.
With the torque acting in the plane of rotation, measurement of the torque happens by placing a sensing
means, such as a strain gage, in the drive shaft. To measure the mass-flow rate, we hold the angular
velocitythe motor rotational speedconstant, leaving the torque as a direct measure of mass flow.
Coriolis crosses platforms
A device employing the gyroscopic principle of operation in the oscillatory mode is a tube shaped in the form
of the letter U. An electromagnetic oscillator drives the U-shaped tuning-fork-like structure at the resonant
frequency of the system, thereby producing a Coriolis acceleration and resultant force.

The force acts alternatelyperpendicular to the flow pathin opposite directions, causing an oscillating
moment about axis O-O of the flowmeter.
The resulting moment (m), acting about the central axis and in a plane perpendicular to the driving moment
(W), produces a twist-type motion, where the deflection angle between FC1 and FC2 is directly proportional
to the mass-flow rate.

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Nicholas Sheble (nsheble@isa.org) writes and edits Automation Basics. A source for this article is
Fundamentals of Flow Measurement, Joseph DeCarlo, an Independent Learning Module, ISA, 1984.

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