Investigation of upward cocurrent gas–liquid pipe flow using ultrafast X-ray tomography and wire-mesh sensor

• Ultrafast X-ray CT and wire-mesh sensor are used for phase fraction measurement in two-phase flow.
• Each captured 2500 frames per second over 5 s from six different flow scenarios.
• Radial profiles of time averaged gas fraction distributions agreed well for both techniques.
• Cross-correlation techniques are used to determine the radial gas-phase velocity profiles.
• Ultrafast X-ray CT system reveals more details of the flow than the wire-mesh sensor.Figure optionsDownload as PowerPoint slide

Ultrafast X-ray tomography and wire-mesh sensor as two high-speed imaging modalities were applied to study upward gas–liquid flow in a vertical pipe of 50 mm inner diameter. High speed scanning of the flow cross-section was performed with 2500 frames per second with both modalities. Sequences of two-dimensional distributions of local gas fraction were acquired and further analyzed. Radial profiles of time averaged gas fraction distributions show a good agreement for both the imaging techniques. Furthermore, radial gas velocity profiles were obtained from a temporal cross-correlation of the image data of both measurement techniques and also bubble size distributions from binarized image data were compared.