Fuel Flow Meters:

Required accuracy of +/- 0.25%

Sentronics developed new FFM for 2018

Traditionally FFM used impellers that causes problem due to the inertia of the impeller causing
inaccuracies when the flow rate changes and also could not deal with rapid reverse flows

Current system use solid state technology through the concept of ultrasonic flow measurements

Located at either end of a thin tube are two piezoelectric transducers which convert electrical
energy into ultrasound pulses, so in principle a pulse is sent from one transducer to the other in the
direction of the flow. Another pulse is then sent back to the original transducer in the opposite
direction, so if the distance between the two elements is known (which it is) the time of both pulses
is measured and then subtracted to determine the velocity of the flow, and from this velocity the
flow rate of the fuel can also be calculated.

The problem however with volumetric flow measurement is that fundamentally the principle is
volumetric , which means that a density measurement is required. Typically density measurements
are performed using a Coriolis or tuning fork densitometer which does not work when subject to
vehicle noise and vibration. Currently the density is being measured using very accurate
temperature measurements and calculating the density based on fuel samples which have had the
density properties measured under lab conditions

Other questions involving these FFM is what is the optimum strategy for sending ultrasonic pulses to
achieve the highest accuracy, and how often should these signals be sent. The industry standard for
flowrate is 200 times per second whilst to achieve the required accuracy the fuel is sampled at 2200
times per second