Function & Principle of Online Vibration Viscometer ！

Function：Increase quality. Reduce waste！

Reliable and rapid in-line viscosity measurement is a vital tool for continuous product control. The purpose is to eliminate sampling with its potential for errors.

Unlike periodic sampling, continuous monitoring provides instant feedback of product changes so the process can be optimised in real-time.

This drives up product consistency and quality whilst minimising waste.

Principle

It’s not difficult to make something vibrate in a fluid. And it’s not a very big next step to link the damping of the vibration to fluid viscosity. But measuring viscosity at the highest precision, in any vessel and in all conditions, needs a more advanced level of design and engineering science.

Resonant, or vibrational viscometers work by creating waves within the liquid being measured. There are many types of waves that can propagate in a liquid and the sort of wave used in viscometry is important.

Viscosity is a shear measurement. It can only be truly assessed under shear conditions, so we use shear waves. Other types of vibrational waves are avoided as they can behave unpredictably in process environments.

To the naked eye, nothing moves. The solid stainless steel sensor element is submerged in the fluid and made to move back and forth microscopically at a specific frequency. This is “resonance”. As the surface of the sensor shears through the liquid, energy is lost to the fluid due to its viscosity.

The dissipated energy is accurately measured by microprocessor-controlled electronics and then equated back to viscosity. Higher viscosity causes a greater loss of energy and hence a higher reading.