A simple thermal sensor system was designed for measuring water flow in the water mains using the heat loss principle with a NTC thick film segmented thermistor as a self-heating sensor. Thick film segmented thermistors were screen printed on alumina substrate. NTC thermistor paste was formed of very fine Cu0.2Ni0.5Zn1.0Mn1.3O4 powder obtained by a combined mechanical activation/thermal treatment process, an organic vehicle and glass frit. The thermal sensor system was analyzed in the static and dynamic regime. A range constant voltage power supply was defined in the range 9–19 V for input water temperatures of 30–2 °C, maintaining a supply voltage in steps of 2 V for a change in 5 °C of input water temperature. This enables optimal operating power, i.e. heat generation on the self-heating thermistor. Measured calibration curves for different input water temperatures and input water flow rates were modeled, enabling interpolation of additional calculated curves to cover a wide range of input water temperatures.

Analysis and optimization of a thermal sensor system for measuring water flow

In order to accomplish the targets of specified levels for reducing the hardware requirements of digital systems, innovative techniques are required to be implemented either at the device level, architectural level or gate level designs. In this paper one of the evolutionary techniques i.e. Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm has been used to optimize digital circuits at the gate level on VHDL platform to draw an automatic, generalised and reliable technique to find optimum solutions with reduced gate count for the designing of digital systems.

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Implementation of Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm in VHDL for Digital Circuits Optimization

This paper proposes hardware design, modelling and implementation for object tracking system targeting video sequence based on Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO). The system uses Structural SIMilarity index (SSIM) as PSO's fitness function. In this paper, we describe Particle Swarm Optimisation algorithm and Structural SIMilarity index, and then we show how it has been simplified for hardware implementation and achieved better results than its software implementation counterpart. Finally, we present the proposed algorithm's performance that has been tested and evaluated over different video sequences, showing its adaption for tracking in real-time.

Efficient hardware implementation of PSO-based object tracking system

Novel heat loss flowmeter for water consists of the small plastic housing and two NTC thick film segmented thermistors with reduced dimensions placed along the main axis. The segmented thermistors were printed using the modified nickel-manganese paste and sintered in air at 850 °C / 10 min in the conveyor furnace. The first thermistor Th1 is cold and measures input water temperature and the second thermistor Th2 is self-heated at constant voltage and measures water flow rate. A short switch mode operating cycle for the self-heating thermistor was introduced: 30s of self-heating from the initial state and after that 90s of natural cooling to the initial state. The self heating DC current in $30^{th}$ second I30 is recognized as the flowmeter response on stable water flow Q, while input water temperature $\text{T}_{{\mathrm {w}}}$ was used as a parameter. The flowmeter temperature range was divided in a few sub-ranges and adaptive DC voltage power supply (RCV) was introduced for each sub-range. The flowmeter measuring range and inaccuracy were compared with respective ones of other flowmeters.

Heat Loss Flowmeter for Water Based on Thick Film Thermistors in Power Save Regime

In this paper, a design method of a thermal mass flowmeter based on constant power is proposed. The purpose is to measure the flow of a small amount of fluid. The principle is to arrange two temperature sensors in the pipeline to heat the speed-measuring temperature sensor. The principle calculates the flow. The polynomial least squares method is used to establish the mathematical model between the fluid flow and the sensor output voltage, and the output signal is processed by the single chip microcomputer. The experimental results show that the relative error of the designed thermal mass flowmeter is within 1.5%. The flowmeter has the advantages of large measurement range, high measurement accuracy and good repeatability.

Design of microcalorimetric mass flowmeter based on constant power

A flow sensor for liquids, based on the principle of fluid-structure heat transfer is presented. The heater and thermistor are integrated and wrapped together as a detector and heat source, allowing heat exchange between the sensor and the fluid. Through numerical simulation, the temperature distribution of the sensor was investigated, under conditions of various flow velocities. The process of turbulent heat transfer in the flow pipe was simulated, the temperature distribution in the sensor was analyzed and compared under different temperature and velocity of the fluid, and the corresponding measuring ranges were determined. The flow detection circuit is designed and the results of water flow velocity tests in the range of (0.01–1)m/s are presented.

Simulation and Research of a Thermal Type Liquid Flow Sensor

In this paper, we present the design, modeling and analysis of particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm in Very- High-Speed Integrated Circuit Hardware Description Language (VHDL). PSO performs a structured randomized search of an unknown parameter space by manipulating a population of parameter estimates to converge on a suitable solution. This is especially useful for optimizing IIR and nonlinear adaptive filters. This paper describes the models of PSO algorithm and presents a circuit architecture that facilitates efficient hardware implementations. The results of the function simulation in the Active HDL platform demonstrate the successful design and modeling of the PSO algorithm.

Feng Tian

Papers

Simulation and Research of a Thermal Type Liquid Flow Sensor

VHDL Modeling of Particle Swarm Optimization Algorithm