Abstract
Flow condit ioners are used extensively in orifice metering facilities upstream of the orifice in an attempt to produce fully developed turbulent pipe flow without the necessity of long upstream pipe lengths. Tube bundles are often installed as flow conditioners, but they have been proven to be ineffective in their attempt to produce fully developed turbulent pipe flow. Consequently, a new flow conditioner has been developed. It is termed the slotted orifice flow conditioner. This conditioner consists of a plate with a circular array of radial slots. The objective of this study was to compare this new flow conditioner's performance with the conventional tube bundle. This was accomplished by measuring velocity profiles and turbulence intensities produced by the flow conditioners as-they were moved to various axial locations in a metering section which followed a 90' tee. Coefficients of discharge across an orifice with 0 = 0.60 were measured with the flow conditioners upstream and a variety of distorted flow fields upstream of the conditioners. Neither the slotted orifice flow conditioner nor the tube bundle were capable of producing a fully developed turbulent pipe flow. However, it was determined that the slotted orifice flow conditioner was able to remove the asymmetry created by the tee which the tube bundle preserves throughout the meter run
Ihfe, Larry Michael (1994). Development of slotted orifice flow conditioner. Master's thesis, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from
https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /ETD -TAMU -1994 -THESIS -I253.