Perhaps they could place a meter stick next to the broken pipe, within
the frame of the video camera, and inject pulses of dye into the oil
stream. Then use the frame rate of the camera and the meter stick to
get an idea of oil velocity. Intuition talking here: the broken pipe
end should still be roughly the same area as a perfectly round one,
even if it's more elliptical now as a result of shears (as long as the
circumference didn't change).
On 10 Jun 2010, at 06:21, John M. Steele wrote:
They can't collect and measure the spilled oil (if only they
could!), or get flow instrumentation down there. The only way to
estimate is to determine the cross section area of the pipe opening,
and the average velocity of the oil jet. They know the diameter of
the pipe, but the pipe was mangled first by the accident, then by
the shears. The pipe opening is not the ideal shape for a
calibrated flow nozzle, so a "spot" velocity from the middle of the
stream would not be very reliable, a velocity profile would be
required. Perhaps someone more qualified could make a reasonable
guess. Looking at the video, I haven't a clue how to estimate.
IUt is not the "garbage out" of conversions, even multiple ones, it
is the "garbage in" of bad data.
