Acoustic Doppler Velocimeter’s performance curves sampling the flow turbulence

GARCÍA, C.M.; CANTERO, M.I.; NIÑO, Y.; GARCÍA M.H.

Salt Lake City, Utah, USA

Congreso; World Water and Environmental Resources Congress 2004; 2004

American Society of Civil Engineers (ASCE)

The capability of Acoustic Doppler Velocimeters (ADV) to resolve flow turbulence isanalyzed by mean of a new tool denoted ADV Perfomance Curves (APCs). Thesecurves can be used to define optimal flow and sampling conditions for turbulencemeasurements using an ADV. To generate these curves, a conceptual model isdeveloped which simulates both, different flow conditions (flow component) and theinstrument operation (instrument component). Different scenarios (ranges of flowconditions and sampling frequencies) are simulated using the conceptual model togenerate several synthetic time series of water velocity and corresponding sampledsignals. For the sake of comparison, the main turbulence statistics parameters of thesynthetically generated sampled and non-sampled time series are plotted indimensionless form; these plots are called APCs.The performance of the developed tools is validated using experimental results. Usingthe APCs a new criterion is proposed to perform ADV measurements with goodresolution of the flow turbulence. In cases where this criterion can not be satisfiedthese curves can be used to make the corrections.