A Current Meter Used for the Estimation of Water

Flow Rate in the Upwelling Pipe

Chicheng Xu, Wei Fan*,Yongfa Qiang,Hui Liang,

Hong Pan
Ocean College
Hangzhou Radiant Digital Tech Co.Ltd
Zhejiang University Hangzhou, Zhejiang, China
Zhoushan, Zhejiang, China e-mail: 535843364@qq.com
*Corresponding author: wayfan@zju.edu.cn

Abstract—Considerable interests in recent years have been II. MEASUREMENT PRINCIPLE

directed towards the study of various mechanical devices to draw
up deep ocean water (DOW), particularly the air-lift artificial A. The relationship between the flow rate and the rotation
upwelling devices. However, one of the obstacles which limit their angle at the free end of metal bar
application in open ocean mariculture is the difficulty in
estimating the flow rate in the upwelling pipe.
The current meter will tilt because of the fluid drag FD in
pipe, which is given by (1),
Conventionally, the water flow rate in the upwelling pipe is
measured by a electromagnetic flowmeter (EMF). However, the 1
FD = ν 2 ρ CD A (1)
EMF can not withstand the pressure under the sea. 2
In this study, a current meter based on accelerometer is where, ν is current speed, ρ is density of ocean water, CD
designed. It aims to obtain relatively precise data of flow rate in is drag coefficient, A is cross section area of floater.
pipe, which enables artificial upwelling devices to perform better
in mariculture. The rotation angle θ at the free end of metal bar is given
by (2) when θ is not big.
Keywords—artificial upwelling; current meter; water flow rate
Fl 2
I. INTRODUCTION θ= (2)
2 EI
The speed measurement of ocean current is critical to many
research fields such as oceanophysics, thalassochemistry and where, F is pressure at the free end of metal bar, l is length
ocean engineering. The amount and accuracy of the data not of metal bar, E is elasticity modulus, I is moment of inertia
only determine the veracity of scientific research, but also of cross section.
influence the development of marine programs. With more and Equation (3) can be obtained from (1) and (2) by substituting
more attention being paid to ocean exploitation and the rapid F with FD .
development of marine science, the velocity measurement is
being required to improve [1]. Therefore, how to obtain enough
accurate velocity data by less cost is one of the key issues for
marine science. 4θ EI
ν= (3)
Besides, the high cost of commercial sensors has so far ρ CD A
impeded current related studies in many fields. In order to meet
the practical need in marine science, an approach of velocity Then, the flow rate Qw is given by (4).
measurement based on accelerometer is presented. The velocity
measurement principle of the ocean current is systematically
introduced. Then, the detailed computation formula is deduced
4θ EI
and measurement model is proposed. The measurement Qw = <S (4)
experiments also have been carried out. The experiment results ρ CD A
show the effectiveness of the measurement setup.
where, S is the cross section area of upwelling pipe.
B. Measurement of rotation angle
The rotation angle is measured by an accelerometer fixed in
the floater. Its accuracy is 0.01g and range 2g. Rectangular
coordinate system is attached to the accelerometer. The origin is

978-1-4673-9724-7/16/$31.00 ©2016 IEEE

set in the accelerometer and the xyz-axis is set in the three
directions of measurement.
Under a certain velocity, the current meter will tilt. The
G
acceleration measured by the accelerometer is a .
G G G G maximum code efficiency. The digitally controlled oscillator
a=ax i+a y j+az k (5)
where, a x , a y and a z are three components of gravity on the
G The MSP430F15x/16x/161x series are microcontroller
coordinate. If the measured acceleration in zero current is a 0 ,
the rotation angle θ is calculated by (6) [2].
G G
a ⋅ a0
cos θ = G G (6)
⋅ 0|
|a||a
III. MPU6050
The MPU6050 is a compact motion processing technology.
It consists of a 3-axis gyroscope and a 3-axis accelerometer. The
three axes are present to acquire the magnitude and direction of
acceleration and orientation. Accelerometer and Gyroscope are
combined on a single silicon chip with an onboard digital
processor. It is capable of tracking fast and slow motion. The
main advantages of MPU6050 are low cost and low power
(3.3V). It is a high performance miniature device. It is an I2C
devise which can communicate at a maximum speed of 400 kHz.
IV. MSP430
The MSP430F149 is a member of the TI Company new
generation 16 bit microcomputer MSP430 family. The MSP430
series is the ultra low power mixed single microcontroller and
good use of battery power supply occasion. The single chip
can collect and transmit the data with its own AD and DMA,
and display the data clearly with wave shape by LCD Module.
The Texas Instruments MSP430 family of ultralow power
microcontrollers consists of several devices featuring different
Fig. 1. MPU6050
sets of peripherals targeted for various applications. The
architecture, combined with five low power modes is optimized
to achieve extended battery life in portable measurement
applications. The device features a powerful 16-bit RISC CPU,
16-bit registers, and constant generators that contribute to
(DCO) allows wake-up from low-power modes to active mode
in less than 6 ȝs.
configurations with two built-in 16-bit timers, a fast 12-bit A/D
converter, dual 12-bit D/A converter, one or two universal serial
synchronous/asynchronous communication interfaces (USART),
I2C, DMA, and 48 I/O pins. In addition, the MSP430F161x
series offers extended RAM addressing for memory-intensive
applications and large C-stack requirements.
V. HARDWARE DESIGN
For the purpose of measuring current meter in upwelling
pipe, it must have relatively high resolution and long duration.
The current meter consists of hardware circuit module, floater
and metal bar. As shown in Fig.2 and Fig.3, the floater is made
of plastic, and the metal bar is made of stainless steel. The
hardware circuit module consists of accelerometer,
microcomputer and memory. The drag coefficient of floater and
elasticity modulus of metal bar are measured experimentally.
The current meter is fixed on the wall of pipe and it tilts
when there is a flow in pipe. The rotation angle of the metal bar
depends on the flow rate, size of floater, density of ocean water
and drag coefficient. In the same area of ocean, these factors are
invariable, so the rotation angle is decided by flow rate in the
upwelling pipe [3] [4].
VI. DATA PROCESSING
There will be error in measurement because of measuring
accuracy, effect of external forces, zero drift and temperature
drift, which have negative effects on measurement. Therefore,
the vector sum of acceleration in three directions is usually not
equal to acceleration of gravity. When there are external forces,
the measured value is the vector sum of the acceleration of
gravity and external forces, which is not equal to acceleration
of gravity, so it is difficult to measure the true value when there
are external forces. Low pass filtering is needed. And when
deviation between the vector sum of acceleration in three
directions and the acceleration of gravity
Fig. 2. Current Meter and Upwelling Pipeline
 Fig. 3. Hardware Circuit Module

is bigger than 0.05g, the measured value should be abandoned.

VII. SOFTWARE DESIGN
The software system includes the main program, the
interrupt service program and a series of subroutines. The main
program completes the initialization and wait for interrupt.
Interrupt service program includes meaurement program and
data processing subroutine. Fig. 4. Program Flow Chart
G
As shown in Fig.4, the a 0 must be got firstly. It is TABLE I. MEASURED VELOCITY UNDER A CERTAIN CURRENT
G
measured in still water and saved in the memory. The a1 is
measured every 0.1 second. As mentioned above, the rotation Measured value
angle θ is calculated timely. And then, ν is calculated and
Test
saved. Time Measured angle Measured velocity
In the subroutines, federal Kalman filter is applied to reduce
measure error. The equation of measurement is pointed out by
using gyroscope in MPU6050. And the equation of state is got
1 0min 5.651° 0.315 m/s
by accelerometer. Then, the optimal value can be obtained by
Kalman filter data fusion [5].
VIII. RESULT 2 5min 6.101° 0.327 m/s
The current meter is tested in a water flume. Under a certain
current, the measured velocity is relatively stable. And the
mean square error is less than 5%. Therefore, it can meet the 3 10min 5.767° 0.318 m/s
need of estimating the flow rate in pipe.

4 15min 5.713° 0.316 m/s

5 20min 5.213° 0.302 m/s

6 25min 5.872° 0.321 m/s

 IX. DISCUSSION
Calibration is necessary before deployment, which includes
two parts: measured value of accelerometer in zero flow (zero
value) and drag coefficient CD .
It is really important to determine the zero value. Otherwise
it will result in a serious system error. When current speed is
very low an accurate zero point and high sampling rate are
needed. Therefore, the zero value is measured every time in still
water before deployment.
Drag coefficient CD is affected by marine environment,
the material and roughness of the floater, so CD needs to be
calibrated to correct errors caused by man-made and natural
factors [6][7].Drag coefficient CD is calibrated in a water tank
here and kept in the memory.
G organisms around Lizard Island, Great Barrier Reef, Australia [J]. PloS
It is also important to note that the a1 mentioned above
must be measured accurately. Therefore, federal Kalman filter
is used to minish measure error in the programs.
X. CONCLUSION
In this study, a current meter based on accelerometer is
designed and used to solve the problem of estimating flow rate
in upwelling pipe. The accelerometer is embedded in the floater
which allows it to withstand the pressure under the sea. Besides,
this kind of current meter is very cheap and can be widely
deployed along the upwelling pipe. To get a better result,
further work will be conducted to improve the accuracy of
measurement.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
This research is financially funded by the Public Welfare
Project of Science Technology Department of Zhejiang Province,
China (No. 2015C31096), the National Natural Science Funds
of China (No. 51120195001 and No. 41406084),and the
International Science & Technology Cooperation Program of
China (No. 2015DFA01410).
REFERENCES
[1] Wei Fan, Yiwen Pan, Clark C.K Liu, JohnC. Wiltshire, Chen-Tung, A.
Chen, Ying Chen. Hydrodynamic design of deep ocean water discharge
for the creation of a nutrient-rich plume in the South China Sea [J]. Ocean
Engineering, 2015, 108: 356-368.
[2] Ross Marchant, Thomas Stevens, Stevens Choukroun, Gavin Coombes,
Michael Santarossa, James Whinney, Peter Ridd. A buoyant tethered
sphere for marine current estimation [J]. Oceanic Engineering, IEEE
Journal of, 2014, 39(1): 2-9.
[3] Jacob L. Johansen. Quantifying water flow within aquatic ecosystems
using load cell sensors: a profile of currents experienced by coral reef
one, 2014, 9(1): e83240.
[4] Max Radermacher, Zane Thackeray, Matthieu De Schipper, Leigh
Gordon, Clintion Chrystal, Rioleuci, Ad Reniers. Tilt current meter array:
Field validation[C]//E-proceedings of the 36th IAHR World Congress,
The Hague, the Netherlands, 28 June-3 July 2015. IAHR, 2015
[5] Xiaoping Yun, Eric R. Bachmann. Design, implementation, and
experimental results of a quaternion-based Kalman filter for human body
motion tracking [J]. Robotics, IEEE Transactions on, 2006, 22(6): 1216-
1227.
[6] Jaber Almedeij. Drag coefficient of flow around a sphere: Matching
asymptotically the wide trend [J]. Powder Technology, 2008, 186(3): 218-
223.
[7] Hongli Yang, Minqiang Fan, Airong Liu, Lianping Dong. General
formulas for drag coefficient and settling velocity of sphere based on
theoretical law [J]. International Journal of Mining Science and
Technology, 2015, 25(2): 219-223.