Broadband Ultrasound Attenuation Technique Applied to Two Phase Flow Pattern Recognition

[摘要] Multi-phase flow measurements are very common in industrial applications, for instance, in oil and gas industry to infer the behavior of oil, gas, and water streaming through a pipe. The use of ultrasound based techniques has several advantages against other techniques, including the electro-mechanical robustness and non-invasive nature. This article proposes the use of broadband attenuation ultrasound (BUA) index as a feature to two-phase flow pattern recognition and void fraction computation. The BUA technique is based on frequency spectrum deformation of a ultrasound wave traveling through a two-phase flow confined into a pipe. Several experiments with different void fractions were done in an experimental vertical two-phase flow loop in order to validate the technique. The obtained results show that it is possible to correctly recognize the various flow regime pattern and estimate void fractions in the range of 0–16 % in the air-water flows using the Broadband Ultrasound Attenuation technique...

[学科分类] 自动化工程

[关键词] Broadband ultrasound attenuation ;Void fraction ;Two-phase flow ;Pattern recognition