News
GUWEM Workshop 2026
Written on juli 27 2026
Oral presentation.
Title
Using guided ultrasonic waves for non-intrusive level measurements.
Authors
Erlend Magnus Viggen, Naseh Amini and Uwe Lieske (Nicoustic).
Abstract
Many industrial processes require monitoring the levels of the filling contents of pressurised tanks. Figure 1a illustrates the separators used in petroleum production, where monitoring is used to keep the oil and water distribution steady at the desired levels. Although many level measurement techniques exist, most of them are intrusive, requiring equipment to be installed inside the tank. However, intrusive measurement systems cannot be retrofitted onto separators without a long and prohibitively expensive shutdown.
Guided waves in the tank wall offer a non-intrusive alternative to level measurement, because different fillings give rise to measurably different attenuation rates as Figure 1b shows. As liquid fillings such as water and oil have horizontal interfaces, it is sufficient to mount a single belt of contact transducers outside the tank, covering approximately half the tank’s circumference from top to bottom as seen in Figure 1a. In turn, each transducer excites a guided wave that every other transducer records as a waveform. These waveforms are processed together to estimate guided-wave attenuation rates, from which the filling levels are estimated.
Although the principle is straightforward, developing a commercial system requires solving many practical challenges. The transducer system needs to be carefully designed to provide fast, robust, and highly accurate measurements. Even so, different contact transducers will have different sensitivities, which need to be compensated for to estimate the attenuation rates. One approach to doing so is to compare every measurement to an empty-tank ‘baseline’ measurement, which captures every guided-wave effect except the attenuation due to the filling. However, the baseline approach has significant weaknesses: it cannot capture how sensitivity varies over time, and empty-tank measurements are not feasible to make in many cases. Furthermore, complex fillings such as sand, foams, and emulsions are more difficult to identify than simple liquids.
Key words
Guided elastic waves, guided ultrasonic waves, level measurement.
Citation (APA)
Viggen, E. M., Amini, N., & Lieske, U. (2026, June 29–July 2). Using guided ultrasonic waves for non-intrusive level measurements [Conference presentation]. Guided Ultrasonic Waves: Emerging Methods (GUWEM) Workshop 2026, Ottrott, France.
Full text
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