Dynamic Visualization Approach of the Multiphase Flow Using Electrical Capacitance Tomography

Identifying the flow patterns is vital for understanding the complicated physical mechanisms in multiphase flows. For this purpose, electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) technique is considered as a promising visualization method for the flow pattern identification, in which image reconstruction algorithms play an important role. In this paper, a generalized dynamic reconstruction model, which integrates ECT measurement information and physical evolution information of the objects of interest, was presented. A generalized objective functional that simultaneously considers the spatial constraints, temporal constraints and dynamic evolution information of the objects of interest was proposed. Numerical simulations and experiments were implemented to evaluate the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed algorithm. For the cases considered in this paper, the proposed algorithm can well reconstruct the flow patterns, and the quality of the reconstructed images is improved, which indicates that the proposed algorithm is competent to reconstruct the flow patterns in the visualization of multiphase flows.