Estimation of thermo-hydrodynamic parameters in energy production systems using non-stationary signal processing

In order to control water flow in power generation systems, obtaining precise information about the parameters of the flow is important. The construction of such systems, as well as the operating conditions, impose the use of non-intrusive techniques. The use of ultrasounds allows solving this problem in a simple and elegant manner. The technique consists in sending a signal to be affected by the flow without sensibly interacting with it, and then extracting the desired parameters of the flow from the received signal. The paper first presents how the acoustic wave is altered by the propagation in the liquid environment, and then it studies the means to analyze the received signal in order to obtain from it information about two important parameters of the flow - the temperature of the water and the flow rate. Polynomial phase modeling is used, for obtaining a good estimation of the propagation times.