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Full-Text Articles in Optics
An Optical Sprayer Nozzle Flow Rate Sensor, Joseph S. Dvorak, Luke E. Bryant
An Optical Sprayer Nozzle Flow Rate Sensor, Joseph S. Dvorak, Luke E. Bryant
Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications
Ensuring proper flow rates from each nozzle on an agricultural sprayer has become even more important as advances continue to be made in precision application technology. In this article, we describe the structure and testing of a sensor technology based on optical cross-correlation to determine the flow rate of individual sprayer nozzles. An advantage of this technology is that it does not require that impellers or other components be placed in the flow, which could cause plugging. The only moving part in the entire system is a solenoid used to inject a tracer dye. The objective of this study was …
A Correlation-Based Optical Flowmeter For Enclosed Flows, Naiqian Zhang, Joseph S. Dvorak, Yali Zhang
A Correlation-Based Optical Flowmeter For Enclosed Flows, Naiqian Zhang, Joseph S. Dvorak, Yali Zhang
Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Faculty Publications
A low-cost flowmeter would be very useful in a wide variety of monitoring situations. This article discusses the development of such a flowmeter based on optical components and its testing with water in an enclosed flow system. The sensor consisted of two sets of LEDs and phototransistors spaced 4 cm apart, monitoring the optical properties of the fluid at upstream and downstream locations, respectively. A small amount of dye was injected into the flow, which caused a change in the optical properties of the fluid at both locations. The time required for this change to move from the upstream to …