Flow rate measurement in a pipe flow by vortex shedding

The flow rate measurement of liquid, steam, and gas is one of the most important areas of application for today’s field instrumentation. Vortex meters are used in numerous branches of industry to measure the volumetric flow by exploiting the unsteady vortex flow behind a blunt body.

The classical Kármán vortex street behind a cylinder shows a decrease in Strouhal number with decreasing Reynolds number. Considering the flow behind a vortex shedding device in a pipe the Strouhal-Reynolds number dependence shows a different behaviour for turbulent flows: a decrease in Reynolds number leads to an increase in Strouhal number. This phenomenon was found in the experimental investigations as well as in the numerical results and has been confirmed theoretically by a stability analysis.