Experimental investigation of horizontal gas-liquid flow by means of wire-mesh sensor

The monitoring and visualization of two-phase flow is of great importance either from technical/practical point of view for process control and supervision or from scientific/theoretical point of view, for the understanding of physical phenomenon. A wire-mesh sensor was applied to experimentally investigate two-phase horizontal pipe flow. Furthermore, some physical flow parameters were extracted based on the raw measured data obtained by the sensor. In this article, first the work principle of wire-mesh sensors is revised and second the methodology of flow parameter extraction is described. A horizontal flow test section comprising of a pipe of 26 mm i.d. 9 m long was employed to generate slug flows under controlled conditions. A 8 × 8 wire-mesh sensor installed at the end of the test section delivers cross-sectional images of void fraction. Based on the raw data, mean void fraction, time series of void fraction and characteristic slug frequency are extracted and analyzed.