Response of turbine flow meters to acoustic perturbations

Acoustic pulsations can have a significant effect on gas turbine flow meters during volume flow measurements. These systematic errors are investigated experimentally for high-frequency pulsations and are compared to the results of a quasi-steady theory. Although significant deviations were found from the quasi-steady theory, the quadratic dependence of the velocity amplitude appears to remain valid for all measurements. The exact quadratic dependence is a function of Strouhal number of the pulsations. In the range of Strouhal numbers below 2.5, based on the chord length at the tip of the rotor blade and the flow velocity at the rotor inlet plane, we find a slow decrease in the error with increasing Strouhal number, SrSr. The shape of the leading edge of the rotor blades does not affect this behaviour.