An Advanced Ultrasonic Technique for Flow and Void Fraction Measurements of Two-Phase Flow

In this paper, we present a hybrid type contrapropagating transmission ultrasonic technique (CPTU) for flow and time averaging ultrasonic transmission intensity void fraction measurements (TATIU) of air-water two-phase flow, which is tested in the new two-phase flow test section mounted recently onto an existing single phase flow rig at the Nuclear Engineering Institute (IEN)/CNEN, Brazil. The circular pipe test section is made of 51.2 mm stainless steel, followed by a transparent extruded acrylic pipe aimed at flow visualization. The two-phase flow rig operates in several flow regimes: bubbly, smooth stratified, wavy stratified and slug flow. The observed flow patterns are compared with the Mandhane et al.’s experimental and Lightstone et al.’s numerical flow regime map for horizontal two phase flows. These flow patterns will be identified by time averaging transmission intensity ultrasonic techniques which have been developed to meet this particular application. A contrapropagating transmission ultrasonic flowmeter is used to measure the flow rate of liquid phase. A pulse-echo TATIU ultrasonic technique used to measure the void fraction of the horizontal test section assembling at IEN is presented. Other flow parameters can be deduced by processing the signals obtained by the CPTU ultrasonic flowmeter and the pulse-echo generator-receiver (TATIU system).Copyright © 2004 by ASME