11-10-2007
If you google it, there are a lot of variations out there.
What I did was built a venturi meter. I took about a 4" pipe then a 4"-2" reducer followed by a section of 2" pipe and that forms the venturi. When air flows through, the diameter change causes the pressure to drop proportional to the square of the flow velocity. You measure the differential pressure, you know the pipe ID and you can calculate velocity and volumetric flow….or you can just plug the numbers in on this web site and it will do the math for you:
http://www.efunda.com/formulae/smc_f...meter.cfm#calcThe 4” pipe needs 2 pressure taps. 1 for the venturi attached to the reservoir end of the slat manometer, and one to measure the vacuum you are testing at attached to the standard manometer. The 2 inch pipe needs 1 pressure tap and connects to the end of the slant manometer. I used 6 pressure taps, instead of 3 with the second set of 3 just 180 degrees around the pipe and T’d to the first set thinking there could be uneven flow distribution and I’d get a more repeatable result by measuring in multiple locations.
I bought a cheap manometer for measuring the test pressure, but a bent plastic tube a a ruler will do just fine too. The pressure in the venturi in pretty low, so I made a slant manometer (plastic tube, a ruler, and a little reservoir) and played with the angle it sits at until it was exactly 10 times the reading on the standard manometer.
I’ve got 2 5hp shop vacs to make the vacuum and I control then with 2 electric fan speed controllers.
The second way to calibrate is using orifice plates. I made .75, 1.25, and 1.75 plates and the math for what they should flow is here:
http://www.efunda.com/formulae/smc_f..._flowmeter.cfmThey have the flow coefficient at .7 as the default, but everything I found said .62 so that’s what I used and the number matched the venturi calculation.
This set-up is good to 200cfm before the slant manometer runs out of numbers. A smaller pipe, like 1.25 or 1.5 would give better low end resolution and a bigger pipe more top end flow. I chose the 4”/2” combo because the range fit this project well.