The assessment of an acoustic Doppler velocimetry profiler from a user’s perspective

Abstract

Acoustic Doppler velocimetry profilers (ADVPs) are widely used in both experimental and field studies because of their robustness in velocity measurements. The acquired measurements do not only offer estimates of the local and instantaneous flow velocity at the interrogated measurement volume, but can also be further processed for the estimation of the bed surface shear stresses, thus they are finding a wide range of applications ranging from water engineering to geomorphology and eco-hydraulics. This study aims to evaluate the performance of an ADVP in obtaining hydrodynamics measurements under fixed flow conditions, with various probe configurations. To this goal, a robust search is conducted where ADVP probe settings are sequentially altered. A number of assessment criteria are used including qualitative observations, such as checking the shape of the velocity profile, as well as quantitative error metrics, including signal-to-noise ratio, correlations and number of spikes. Further, estimation of the bed shear stresses computed by means of using the log Law of the Wall and turbulent kinetic energy, allow obtaining a better understanding of the uncertainties involved and the importance of making a better informed choice with respect to the probe configuration settings. Thus, the methodology and performance metrics provided herein, although presented for a given flow, can generally be applied from practitioners and researchers alike.

Calibration and Verification of Operation Parameters for an Array of Vectrino Profilers Configured for Turbulent Flow Field Measurement around Bridge Piers—Part II

“…Adaptive PA provided better overall results than the Max interval for the same CS and TPS, with also higher SNR and Correlation values, similar to the findings reported by Liu et al [54] who state that Max interval PA always made the SNR and Correlation lower. If the velocimeter data are limited in their quality because of the seeding of the flow, the SNR and Correlation will be low.…”

“…If the velocimeter data are limited in their quality because of the seeding of the flow, the SNR and Correlation will be low. In that case, the PA may better be changed to Max interval, as shown in [54]. Our case was well seeded, so adaptive PA was sufficient to get the good quality data which also satisfied the visual check of velocity profiles (see Appendices A-D).…”

“…Our case was well seeded, so adaptive PA was sufficient to get the good quality data which also satisfied the visual check of velocity profiles (see Appendices A-D). In the study by Liu et al [54], it is pointed out that the Max interval was the more The results show that each parameter change has a significant effect on the measured values of each velocity component when compared to TC. There is also an apparent trend where RMSE increases with the flow rate under the same flow depth.…”

Numerical Investigation of Local Scour Protection around the Foundation of an Offshore Wind Turbine

“…In this flume experiment, an acoustic Doppler flowmeter w used to measure the flow velocity. In addition, the probe configuration of the Dopp flow meter can be optimized to obtain more accurate results [46]. It can be seen that t numerical model results are in good agreement with the measured data of the flume te The error between the model data and the experimental data was estimated and found be within the range of no more than 10%.…”

Experimental methods and instrumentation in hydraulics

“…Furthermore, the bistatic configuration of the Acoustic Doppler Velocity Profiler enabled detailed velocity profiling close to the boundary that was relevant to assessing the shear stress at bounded flow. This required fixing the instrumental parameters to the expected velocity magnitude along the entire profile from almost zero very close to the wall to flow core velocity outside the boundary layer (Liu et al 2022). The transient flow effect on bedload transport was successfully investigated by image and ultrasound-based techniques (Przyborowski et al 2022) that again bore out the capability of advanced techniques in observing challenging processes in terms of spatial and time resolution required.…”