Measurement of Oil-Water Interface Characteristics in Horizontal Pipe Using a Conductance Parallel-Wire Array Probe

In this paper, we propose a novel conductance parallel-wire array probe (CPAP) to measure the interface characteristics of segregated horizontal oil-water two-phase flows. A measurement system of CPAP is designed to make it work in a cyclic excitation mode and detect the interfacial heights at different locations of a pipe cross section. A finite-element analysis and a static calibration experiment are conducted to access the relationship between the interfacial height and the dimension conductance detected by the CPAP. Through carrying out a dynamic experiment of horizontal oil-water flows, the 3-D oil-water interfaces are reconstructed using the CPAP responses to study the interfacial evolution and its effect on the droplet detachment. Finally, the average fluctuations of the oil-water interfaces are extracted based on the reconstructed 3-D oil-water interface.