Industrial Fluids Electronic Emulator for Rheological Doppler Tests

Rheological measurements are widely employed for the monitoring of industrial production processes and for product quality certification. Recently, Doppler electronic systems are available that perform rheological fluid characterization in-line. Rheological fluid features are obtained from the velocity profile that the fluid develops when it flows in a pipe. Test, development, and performance assessment of these systems often involve the employment of cumbersome flow-rigs. Moreover, the exact profile the fluid develops in the flow-rigs is not perfectly known, making difficult an accurate performance evaluation of the connected system. In this work an electronic flow-rig emulator is presented. Connected to the transducer input of the system to be tested, it reproduces the echoes like they were originated from the fluid. Moreover, it reproduces a fluid with user-programmed, and thus well known, rheological and flow features. Tests of the proposed emulator connected to an industrial Doppler system are presented, where 2 fluids with different features are emulated.