Abstract
A new non-intrusive measurement technique for two-phase flow in microchannels is presented. The development of an evanescent field-based optical fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor is described, and experiments coupled with flow visualization demonstrating the performance of this sensor are presented. Two adjacent 1-mm FBGs in etched D-shaped fiber are embedded into the surface of a PDMS microchannel. Experiments are conducted in both droplet and slug flow regimes and high-speed digital video is captured synchronously with the sensor data. The FBGs exhibit an on–off type response to the passage droplets which is shown to correlate precisely with the passage of the liquid phase. This correlation enables the measurement of droplet average velocity and size using only the sensor data. In addition to the use of both FBG signals for the purpose of measuring droplet speed and size, it is shown that for droplets larger than the FBG length, a single FBG can be used to estimate the convection velocity and size of fast moving droplets. This sensing method is potentially useful for monitoring two-phase flow in fuel cells and microfluidic applications such as micro-heat exchangers and lab-on-a-chip systems.
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Acknowledgments
This research was funded through a Strategic Research grant from the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) of Canada. The D-fiber used for the sensors in this study was kindly provided by KVH industries Inc.
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David, N., Djilali, N. & Wild, P. Fiber Bragg grating sensor for two-phase flow in microchannels. Microfluid Nanofluid 13, 99–106 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-012-0945-3
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10404-012-0945-3