Application of Wire Mesh Sensor to Identify Gas-liquid Flow Patterns in a Horizontal Pipe

The flow pattern recognition and phase interface imaging are the basis of studying gas-liquid two-phase flow. It can directly reflect the dynamic development process of phase distribution in the flow process, and it is also the basis for theoretical analysis and physical modeling. In order to identify the characteristics of gas-liquid flow patterns by self-developed wire mesh sensor (WMS), the phase concentration imaging analysis of both non-swirling gas-liquid flows and swirling gas-liquid flows induced by a swirler in a 30 mm inner diameter pipeline is carried out and compared with high-speed photography. Tap water and air are used as working fluids. The results indicate that the WMS can reflect the phase concentration distribution of bubble, plug, slug flow, swirling gas column flow and intermittent flow. Especially, the WMS has good imaging ability for large-scale phase interface distribution. To some extent, it can reflect the void fraction characteristics in a pipe, but it cannot reflect the swirling characteristics of swirling gas-liquid flow. The WMS does not have the ability to directly identify the thin liquid film and microbubbles, which needs to be further optimized.