A New Capacitance Sensor for Measuring the Void Fraction of Two-Phase Flow Through Tube Bundles

Sensors

Jovica Riznic¹  David Weaver²  Adib Fatayerji³  Marwan Hassan³  Wael Ahmed³  Ahmed Elsaftawy³ 

[1] Canadian Nuclear Safety Commission, Ottawa, ON K1P5S9, Canada;Faculty of Engineering, McMaster University, Hamilton, ON L8S4L7, Canada;School of Engineering, University of Guelph, Guelph, ON N1G2W1, Canada;

关键词: two-phase flow;    void fraction measurement;    capacitance sensor;    void fraction;    flow patterns;    tube bundle;   

DOI  :  10.3390/s20072088

来源: DOAJ

【 摘 要 】

Evaluating the two-phase flow parameters across tube bundles is crucial to the analysis of vibration excitation mechanisms. These parameters include the temporal and local variation of void fraction and phase redistribution. Understanding these two-phase parameters is essential to evaluating the stability threshold of tube bundle configurations. In this work, capacitance sensor probes were designed using finite element analysis to ensure high sensor sensitivity and optimum response. A simulation-based approach was used to calibrate and increase the accuracy of the void fraction measurement. The simulation results were used to scale the normalized capacitance and minimize the sensor uncertainty to ±5%. The sensor and required conditioning circuits were fabricated and tested for measuring the instantaneous void fraction in a horizontal triangular tube bundle array under both static and dynamic two-phase flow conditions. The static calibration of the sensor was able to reduce the uncertainty to ±3% while the sensor conditioning circuit was able to capture instantaneous void fraction signals with frequencies up to 2.5 kHz.

【 授权许可】

Unknown