- #1
snwright
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I'm trying to work through a problem in my head and am looking for a little guidance.
I want to build a system that can be used to measure the volume of water inside a container of arbitrary size and shape. The application, in case you're curious, is the drinking water tanks of a sailboat. They tend to be shaped to conform to the hull, and moreover, they're subject to quite a bit of sloshing around.
The traditional method of doing this is to use a float, but the result is that you're measuring water *level*, not water *volume*. If you want to convert to volume, you need an accurate model of the shape of the tank. You're also subject to the imprecision due to the water moving around in the tank.
At first I thought that I could use a water pressure sensor at the bottom of the tank, but of course that would be measuring just the water column height - it would be agnostic to the shape of the vessel and therefore not useful in determining volume.
What I really want is a way to measure the volume of the water inside the vessel, but I'm unsure how to do that practically. For my purposes, directly measuring either the mass or weight of the water would be close enough. But I can't use a scale in this application (remember, this is a water tank that's affixed to the hull of a boat), and I'm a little unclear how I would measure weight (force) directly.
If anyone has any pointers, I'm all ears.
Thanks!
Spencer
I'm trying to work through a problem in my head and am looking for a little guidance.
I want to build a system that can be used to measure the volume of water inside a container of arbitrary size and shape. The application, in case you're curious, is the drinking water tanks of a sailboat. They tend to be shaped to conform to the hull, and moreover, they're subject to quite a bit of sloshing around.
The traditional method of doing this is to use a float, but the result is that you're measuring water *level*, not water *volume*. If you want to convert to volume, you need an accurate model of the shape of the tank. You're also subject to the imprecision due to the water moving around in the tank.
At first I thought that I could use a water pressure sensor at the bottom of the tank, but of course that would be measuring just the water column height - it would be agnostic to the shape of the vessel and therefore not useful in determining volume.
What I really want is a way to measure the volume of the water inside the vessel, but I'm unsure how to do that practically. For my purposes, directly measuring either the mass or weight of the water would be close enough. But I can't use a scale in this application (remember, this is a water tank that's affixed to the hull of a boat), and I'm a little unclear how I would measure weight (force) directly.
If anyone has any pointers, I'm all ears.
Thanks!
Spencer