Test and Measurement: Know It All

Chapter 6. Flow

6.1. General

The term flow can generally be applied in three distinct circumstances:

• Volumetric flow is the commonest and is used to measure the volume of material passing a point in unit time (e.g., m³ · s⁻¹). It may be indicated at the local temperature and pressure or normalized to some standard conditions using the standard gas law relationship:

  where suffix m denotes the measured conditions and suffix n the normalized condition.

• Mass flow is the mass of fluid passing a point in unit time (e.g., kg · s⁻¹).
• Velocity of flow is the velocity with which a fluid passes a given point. Care must be taken as the flow velocity may ...