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Global Water Flow Measurement and Calibration Facilities: Review of Methods and Instrumentations

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Abstract

Water Flow Calibration Facilities (WFCFs) are widely used for the calibration of water flowmeters all over the world. Last two decades have witnessed significant research contributions in the development of instrumentation and techniques with special emphasis on reducing the measurement errors and improving the measurement uncertainty in flow calibration. It is difficult to find a consolidated report/review of such developments for the new entrants/researchers/metrologists in this field. Therefore, authors considered that it is high time to review the literature and compile a concise report to this effect. Present paper is an attempt to publish terse review on the historical background, recent developments and current status of WFCF and related works. The work going on at National Physical Laboratory, India, in this direction is also briefly described.

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Acknowledgments

The authors are thankful to Prof. R.C. Budhani, Director, National Physical Laboratory, New Delhi for his constant encouragement. The authors gratefully acknowledge the Fluid Metrology Group of the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), Gaithersburg, USA for providing exposure to one of the authors (SKJ) on their state-of-the-art Fluid Flow Calibration facilities which resulted into good understanding of the water flow calibration facility employing static-gravimetric method. Thanks are also due to NMIJ, Japan; Elsevier, Amsterdam; PTB, Germany and NIST, USA for granting permission to authors for utilizing some of their figures and results of the already published papers.

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Correspondence to Shiv Kumar Jaiswal.

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Jaiswal, S.K., Yadav, S., Bandyopadhyay, A.K. et al. Global Water Flow Measurement and Calibration Facilities: Review of Methods and Instrumentations. MAPAN 27, 63–76 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12647-012-0017-x

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12647-012-0017-x

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