Independent component analysis of interface fluctuation of gas/liquid two-phase flows - experimental study

It is important to understand the behaviour of two-phase flows in industry. This paper presents a study of the interface fluctuation between gas/liquid two-phase flows in a horizontal pipeline. Having obtained the data of a gas/liquid flow by electrical resistance tomography (ERT), an independent component analysis (ICA) method can be applied not only to extract the flow regime information but also the interface fluctuation of the flow. The efficiency of ICA with the ERT data has been assessed by experiment. The independent components have been interpreted by comparing the obtained independent components with the reconstructed images by ERT, showing that ICA is not only effective in extracting flow regime information, but also provides the fluctuation of each individual phase and the interface between the two phases. Without modelling the forward problem, this method can be applied to other electrical tomography modalities. (C) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.