A Laboratory Study on the Design and Performance Evaluation of Pitot-Tube

Due to the increasing demand for water resources worldwide, this commodity and its spatial and temporal properties are of the interest for decision makers and scientists. On the other hand, the accuracy in detecting the physical characteristics of the water flow such as velocity is among the most important aspects of the hydraulic studies. The pitot tube, which is not widely used in the open channel hydraulic practices, is one of the equipment used for determination of the flow velocity. In this study, we have addressed the design, fabrication, and laboratory experiments related to a pitot tube to investigate its applicability for open channel experiments. A 3D-printed pitot-tube is designed and used in a set of experiments carried out in an open channel, with different flow rates (three experiments). As a result, the relative error rates were interpreted by comparing the velocity rates obtained with the help of the water level difference in the differential manometer (Vm) and the velocity rates obtained from the flow continuity equation in the open channel (Vo). Results indicated a 50% bias, while the scatter analysis showed that the associated deviations match a linear equation and once used in the interpretation of the results, the linear transformation reveals a 3% bias in the experiments.