Abstract
Accurate measurement of the thin liquid film thickness in pipes is the foundation for studying the characteristics of the film. In this paper, an interferometry-based measurement of liquid film thickness in transparent pipes is developed, which can greatly improve the accuracy, extend the lower limit of measurement and provide a new technical approach for the calibration and traceability. The light intensity distribution is established based on the optical path analysis and a mathematical model. A new algorithm to solve the direction ambiguity is developed to reconstruct the phase distribution. Besides, the effect of the pipe wall is taken into account, which can be suppressed by image subtraction and enhancement technology. The proposed method is of high accuracy and robustness, whose reconstruction errors are 0.064% and 0.25% for the smooth and slight fluctuating liquid films, respectively.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
XUE T, XU L S, ZHANG S Z. Bubble behavior characteristics based on virtual binocular stereo vision[J]. Optoelectronics letters, 2018, 14(1): 44–47.
ZHOU X G, JIN N D, WANG Z Y, et al. Temporal and spatial evolution characteristics of gas-liquid two-phase flow pattern based on image texture spectrum descriptor[J]. Optoelectronics letters, 2009, 5(6): 445–449.
XUE T, LI Z, LI C, et al. Measurement of thickness of annular liquid films based on distortion correction of laser-induced fluorescence imaging[J]. Review of scientific instruments, 2019, 90(3): 033103.
WADA S, KIKURA H, ARITOMI M. Pattern recognition and signal processing of ultrasonic echo signal on two-phase flow[J]. Flow measurement and instrumentation, 2006, 17(4): 207–224.
WOLF A, JAYANTI S, HEWITT G F. Flow development in vertical annular flow[J]. Chemical engineering science, 2001, 56(10): 3221–3235.
CHERDANTSEV A V, MARKOVICH D M. Evolution of views on the wavy structure of a liquid film in annular dispersed gas-liquid flow[J]. Journal of applied mechanics and technical physics, 2020, 61(3): 331–342.
WEI J, XU X, ZHANG J, et al. Measurement of liquid film coverage on vertical plates with hydrophilic and structured surface treatments[J]. Industrial & engineering chemistry research, 2021, 60(9): 3736–3744.
SHEDD T A, NEWELL T A. Automated optical liquid film thickness measurement method[J]. Review of scientific instruments, 1998, 69(12): 4205–4213.
SCHUBRING D, SHEDD T A, HURLBURT E T. Planar laser-induced fluorescence (PLIF) measurements of liquid film thickness in annular flow. Part II: analysis and comparison to models[J]. International journal of multiphase flow, 2010, 36(10): 825–835.
CHAROGIANNIS A, AN J S, VOULGAROPOULOS V, et al. Structured planar laser-induced fluorescence (S-PLIF) for the accurate identification of interfaces in multiphase flows[J]. International journal of multiphase flow, 2019, 118: 193–204.
YOUN Y J, HAN Y, SHIKAZONO N. Liquid film thicknesses of oscillating slug flows in a capillary tube[J]. International journal of heat and mass transfer, 2018, 124: 543–551.
SHANG W, CHEN J. A partial coherent interferometry for measuring the thickness of a dynamic liquid sheet[J]. International journal of multiphase flow, 2019, 116: 15–25.
REN Y, CAO Z, TANG X, et al. µm-resolution thickness distribution measurement of transparent glass films by using a multi-wavelength phase-shift extraction method in the large lateral shearing interferometer[J]. Optics express, 2019, 27(3): 2899–2914.
CHEN Z, HU X, HU K, et al. Measurement of the microlayer characteristics in the whole range of nucleate boiling for water by laser interferometry[J]. International journal of heat and mass transfer, 2020, 146: 118856.
WANG X, QIU H. Fringe probing of liquid film thickness of a plug bubble in a micropipe[J]. Measurement science and technology, 2005, 16(2): 59.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Statements and Declarations
The authors declare that there are no conflicts of interest related to this article.
This work has been supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Nos.62071325 and 61828106).
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Xue, T., Wu, Y. Measurement of thin liquid film thickness in pipes based on optical interferometry. Optoelectron. Lett. 18, 489–494 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11801-022-2022-9
Received:
Revised:
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11801-022-2022-9