Eventos Anais de eventos
COBEM 2021
26th International Congress of Mechanical Engineering
Simulation of the relation between the fluid mixture admittance and phase fraction in Wire-Mesh sensor for oil-water flow
Submission Author:
Adriana Bonilla , Cundinamarca , Colombia
Co-Authors:
Hugo Fernando Velasco Peña, Adriana Bonilla, Carlos Jose Gonzalez Rojas, Oscar Mauricio Hernandez Rodriguez
Presenter: Carlos Jose Gonzalez Rojas
doi://10.26678/ABCM.COBEM2021.COB2021-0282
Abstract
A considerable part of the flows present in nature and engineering applications involve the simultaneous motion of materials with more than one thermodynamic phase. The study of these multiphase flows can be conducted from experimental, theoretical, or computational perspectives, but the complexity of the phenomena usually demands a combination of them. One of the techniques that are being used for multiphase flow studies is the wire-mesh sensor. This is an intrusive imaging device that allows to create an “image” of the multiphase flow with high spatial and temporal resolution. The wire-mesh provides indirect measurements of the phases in a given flow pattern exploiting its electrical properties. However, the relation between the electrical properties (especially the permittivity) and the phase fraction is done with fixed models that have been designed for sensors with conditions not fulfilled by the wire-mesh. Simulations of the tridimensional electric field over each crossing point of a wire-mesh sensor are performed applying the finite element method. With the objective of analyzing the adequacy of models such as Maxwell-Garnett, Series, Bruggeman, among others, and to propose a better relationship between the permittivity and the phase fraction in the case of a wire-mesh sensor. The sensor modeled in the study consists of 10 stainless steel wires with 0.05 mm radius, 10 mm long, 2 mm separation between the wires in the same plane, and a distance between planes of 1.5 mm. The simulation space is a 12 × 12 × 8 mm3 box. The water-oil mixture simulation was carried out keeping the water as the continuous phase. The oil droplets vary between 0.8 and 2 mm of radius, for each simulation. A parametric analysis of the fluid admittance (conductance and permittivity) behavior for different fractions of two-phase water-oil flow was developed. Using this parametric analysis was possible to explore the relations between the electrical properties and the phase fractions.
Keywords
Liquid–liquid flow, Oil–water flow, Finite Element Method, wire-mesh sensor, Electrical properties, Mixture dielectric models
