Tuning capacitance wire-mesh sensor gains for measurement of conductive fluids

In this paper, the front-end circuit of a capacitance wire-mesh sensor (WMS) is analyzed in detail and a new methodology to tune its feedback gains is reported. This allows, for the first time, a capacitance WMS to be able to provide linear measurements of multiphase fluids with electrical conductivity greater than 100 uS/cm, which is particularly important for tap water, where the conductivity is typically in between 100-500 uS/cm. Experimental and numerical results show that the selected gains using the proposed methodology contribute to suppress cross-talk and energy losses, which in turn, reduces considerably the deviation of the conductivity measurement and the estimation of derived flow parameters, such as local and average phase fraction.