Radiator testing - flow meters.

[benjo]

Hello all. We are conducting some radiator testing at the moment, and are struggling to find a flow meter that will handle the high temperature and pressure of the radiator lines. Well for the right price anyway, we have found some that are fairly expensive (1300+ per sensor) and more then we would like to spend.

Has anyone done a similar thing before and found a reasonably priced item?

[benjo]

Hello all. We are conducting some radiator testing at the moment, and are struggling to find a flow meter that will handle the high temperature and pressure of the radiator lines. Well for the right price anyway, we have found some that are fairly expensive (1300+ per sensor) and more then we would like to spend.

Has anyone done a similar thing before and found a reasonably priced item?

[BeaverGuy]

here you go.

Acrylic Flowmeters (http://www.omega.com/ppt/pptsc.asp?ref=FL2000&Nav=vhlm01)

[murpia]

Often radiator flow is measured by a pressure drop method rather than direct volumetric flow measurement.

You can calibrate the coefficient of discharge for your radiator using a header tank, a diptick and a stopwatch. All are cheap...

Regards, Ian

[Michael Palaszynski]

What kind of motor are you running? Internal or External? Ian's on the right track with the pressure measurment.

You also have a lot of boundary conditions:

T_in, T_out, deltaT...ditto for the pressures.

you also know approximate cross-sectional areas.