Flow Measurement and Instrumentation 40 (2014) 124–132

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Flow Measurement and Instrumentation

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/flowmeasinst

Multi-range sensors for the measurement of liquid film thickness

distributions based on electrical conductance
Rashmita Tiwari a, Manuel Damsohn a, Horst-Michael Prasser a,n, Daniel Wymann b,1,
Christoph Gossweiler b,1
a
ETH Zurich, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering (MAVT), Laboratory of Nuclear Energy Systems, Sonneggstrasse 3, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
b
University of Applied Sciences and Arts Northwestern Switzerland, Institute of Thermal and Fluid Engineering, Klosterzelgstrasse 2, CH-5210 Windisch, Switzerland

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: The paper presents an approach toward an enhancement of the measuring range of high-speed sensors
Received 22 January 2014 for the measurement of liquid film thickness distributions based on electrical conductance. This type of
Received in revised form sensors consists of electrodes mounted flush to the wall. The sampling of the current generated between
2 September 2014
a pair of neighboring electrode is used as a measure of the film thickness. Such sensors have a limited
Accepted 7 September 2014
Available online 17 September 2014
measuring range, which is proportional to the lateral distance between the electrodes. The range is
therefore coupled to the spatial resolution. The proposed new design allows an extension of the film
Keywords: thickness range by combining electrode matrices of different resolution in one and the same sensor. In
Gas–liquid flow this way, a high spatial resolution is reached with a small thickness range, whereas a film thickness that
Film Flow
exceeds the range of the high resolution measurement can still be acquired even though on the costs of a
Annular flow
lower spatial resolution. A simultaneous signal acquisition with a sampling frequency of 3.2 kHz
Liquid film thickness measurement
combines three measuring ranges for the characterization of a two-dimensional film thickness
distribution: (1) thickness range 0–600 mm, lateral resolution 2
2 mm2, (2) thickness range 400–
1300 mm, lateral resolution 4
4 mm2, and (3) thickness range 1000–3500 mm, lateral resolution
12
12 mm2. The functionality of this concept sensor is demonstrated by tests in a horizontal wavy
stratified air–water flow at ambient conditions. Using flexible printed circuit board technology to
manufacture the sensor makes it possible to place the sensor at the inner surface of a circular pipe.
& 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Liquid films that are wetting surfaces are prominent in many
technical applications, for instance on fuel rods of boiling water
reactors, were the presence of the film is a necessary condition for
a sufficient heat removal. They are found on cooled surfaces
furthermore due to condensation or in numerous other fields of
chemical and mechanical process engineering. The measurement
of the liquid film thickness is therefore of interest in experiments
aiming at an optimization of the related industrial processes, or, in
certain cases, for their direct monitoring.
There are different methods which can be used for liquid film
thickness measurements. The principles are based on extraction of
the film by suction [1–3], on photons [4–6], on ultrasound [7] or
on electrical impedance [8–13]. Most of these methods are used
for the research on two-phase annular flow. Electrical methods
have been widely applied for many years in the area of air–water
n
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: hprasser@ethz.ch (H.-M. Prasser).
1
info.itfe.technik@fhnw.ch.
annular pipe flow. They are mostly based on the relationship
between conductance and liquid film thickness between a pair of
electrodes. To apply this technique, the liquid must be electrically
conductive. As a second option, capacitance can be used as
primary measuring quantity in case of nonconductive liquids [14].
The electrical liquid film sensor used for the current work is
based on the principles of the signal acquisition of wire-mesh
sensors [15]. The first application of this signal acquisition method
for the measurement of a liquid film thickness was presented by
Belt et al. [16,17]. Electrodes are mounted flush to the wall of a
flow channel. The sensor represents therefore essentially a non-
intrusive technique. The receiver electrodes are circular conduct-
ing surfaces. The circumferential pitch between two receiver
electrodes is 4.9 mm. The transmitter electrodes are ring shaped
and placed in an axial distance from the receivers. A total of 10
rings of 32 measuring positions follow each other in axial direc-
tion. A second ring-shaped electrode separates the transmitter
ring from the subsequent ring of receiver electrodes. The separa-
tion of measuring positions in axial direction is 19.5 mm. The
spatial resolution of a sensor delivering a spatial distribution of the
measured quantity is given by the dimensions of the smallest
structure which is resolved. Since the conductance is averaged

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.flowmeasinst.2014.09.002
0955-5986/& 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
 R. Tiwari et al. / Flow Measurement and Instrumentation 40 (2014) 124–132
over the area of 4.9
19.5 mm2 given by the electrode spacing, the
sensor averaged over smaller structures of the film thickness
distribution, which defines the spatial resolution. The measuring
frequency was set to 5 kHz.
The electrical current flowing between electrodes mounted
flush to the wall reaches saturation at a certain liquid film
thickness. This is a fundamental property of the electrical potential
field. Since the field strength decreases with growing distance
from the electrodes, the sensibility to a change of the film
thickness decreases when the film becomes thicker. The current
converges toward a value characteristic for an infinite coverage
with the conducting liquid. The range at which the sensibility is
still sufficient for a film thickness measurement is called “penetra-
tion depth”. It depends on the geometry of the electrodes and
scales with their size. This limits the measuring range. A similar
behavior was found by Hu et al. [18] for capacitance measure-
ments with electrodes flush to the surface. In case of the sensor
presented by Belt et al. [16,17], the penetration depth at which 95%
of the saturation is reached is 3.3 mm.
Da Silva et al. [19] proposed a sensor with higher spatial
resolution. Individual sensitive positions were designed as an
interdigital structure of a pair of electrodes arranged in a two-
dimensional measuring matrix. The current generated between a
pair of interdigital electrode is sampled and used as a measure of
the film thickness. The lateral period of measuring positions is
7.8 mm in the first and 9.7 mm in the second direction; the
measuring frequency is 2500 Hz for a matrix with the dimensions
of 64
64. Transmitter electrodes have three fingers ranging into
gaps between the fingers of the opposite receiver electrode. The
interlaced structure has a spatial wavelength of 2.6 mm. The
described structure leads to a penetration depth of 0.69 mm
given by the authors for 97% of saturation. This is a quite small
measuring range compared to the lateral resolution given by the
spatial period of electrode pairs of about 8–9 mm. The small
relative penetration depth which corresponds to only about 10%
of the lateral resolution is a clear disadvantage. The benefit of the
interdigital geometry lays in a higher signal strength and with it in
a better sensibility for very thin films of a liquid with low
conductivity. This was not important neither in the application
to gravity driven mixing processes in a pool [19] nor in the
experiments in the hydraulic coupling [20]. Both cases would
have benefitted from a higher penetration depth providing more
information from beyond the boundary layer.
The first step to increase relative penetration depth is the
abandonment of the interdigital structures, which is accompanied
by a reduction of the signal strength. This can be compensated by a
higher amplification of the input cascades of the signal acquisition
system. A second step consists of an optimization of the electrode
geometry. Li et al. [21] have shown that the relative penetration
depth of a single permittivity sensor with electrodes flush to the
wall can be increased by grounded shield electrodes put between
the measuring electrodes. Since sensors for permittivity and for
conductivity behave essentially similar, this concept can be
applied to conductivity sensors as well. Damsohn and Prasser
[22] succeeded in applying the approach of using shield electrodes
to increase the penetration depth relative to the lateral electrode
pitch in two-dimensional sensor arrays. Also there, the lateral
resolution can be increased by arranging grounded surfaces
between transmitter and receiver electrodes. In [22] a number of
periodic electrode structures were identified that are compatible
with the concept of the two-dimensional measuring array of their
liquid film sensor. This is novel compared to the solution of Da
Silva at al. [19], which used grounded surfaces only to reduce
cross-talk by shielding the second neighbors of receiver lines from
the potential of the activated transmitters. A sensor based on
electrodes and ground pitches with a circular shape represents a
125
good compromise of resolution, penetration depth, signal quality
and easy manufacturing is described in [23]. This sensor geometry
was taken as the basis for the multi-range sensor described below.
2. Sensor design
The sensor consists of a matrix of electrical conducting pads
arranged flush on an insulating surface which is representing the
wall of the flow duct in the same time. The conducting areas serve
as electrodes for establishing a contact with the fluid. There are
three different types of electrodes, namely transmitter, receiver
and ground electrodes. The basic idea for the fast acquisition of
time sequences of two dimensional film thickness distributions is
the measurement of the electrical current flowing from a trans-
mitter pad to a neighboring receiver pad due to potential differ-
ence between both electrodes. The current depends on the
thickness of the electrically conducting liquid film covering both
electrodes. The two-dimensional array is arranged in such a way
that the transmitting electrodes are connected in one direction
(transmitter lines), while the receiver electrodes are coupled
perpendicular (receiver lines) to this direction (Fig. 1). The voltage
pulses are supplied to the transmitter lines in successive order.
During the excitation of each transmitter line, all currents arriving
at the receiver lines are sampled in parallel. After the excitation
of the last transmitter electrode, a complete matrix of primary
measuring values is recorded. These values represent the con-
ductance distribution in the liquid film on the sensor surface,
which is the measure of the film thickness.
The signal acquisition method used for this sensor is equivalent
to the one of the wire-mesh sensors, which is described in detail in
[15]. A special feature of the wire-mesh electronic circuitry is the
low impedance of transmitter driver and receiver pre-amplifier
cascades, which guarantees that the potential at all non-activated
transmitter electrodes and all receiver electrodes remains very
close to ground potential. This is an important feature to suppress
cross-talk to far located receiver electrodes, as discussed in [15].
The low impedance guarantees that all receives and the not
activated transmitter electrodes stay on ground potential during
the activation of one set of transmitter electrodes. Consequently,
parasitic currents traveling from not activated transmitters to
receivers as well as from a receiver electrode to a neighboring
one are not induced and cannot affect the measurement.
The sensor introduced in this work is a modification of the
sensor presented in [23]. The diameter of receiver and transmitter
electrodes was set to 0.5 mm, whereas the ground electrodes had
a diameter of 0.9 mm (Fig. 2). The distance between the centers of
Fig. 1. Connection of electrode pads forming the sensor matrix [23].
126 R. Tiwari et al. / Flow Measurement and Instrumentation 40 (2014) 124–132
Fig. 2. Sensor geometry [23] (G—ground electrode, G*—transmitter or receiver
electrode grounded by the low impedance of the connected signal acquisition
circuits in the non-activated case, T—transmitter electrode, R—receiver).
active electrodes and the centers of the ground electrodes is 1 mm.
As shown in Fig. 2, the measuring volume is limited by four
symmetry boundaries between columns of transmitter electrodes
and rows of receiver electrodes. Due to the symmetry of the
periodicity of the electrode matrix, the measurement is focused on
the rectangular sensitive area shown in grey color in Fig. 2. In case
of a liquid film of constant thickness, the symmetry causes the
electrical streamlines of the potential field to follow the horizontal
boundaries of the sensitive area in Fig. 2. In the first order
approximation, the conductivities in the upper and lower neigh-
boring sensitive areas do therefore not affect the current between
transmitters and receivers forming this sensitive area. Contribu-
tions to the measuring result by currents traveling from the
transmitter to more distant receiver electrodes cannot be excluded
by symmetry considerations. They represent uncertainties of the
measurement since they contain information on the liquid film
thickness outside the grey square marking the sensible area. In
general, uncertainties arise
(1) from a growing departure from symmetry when the film
thickness is not uniform,
(2) from residual small non-zero impedance of the electrode, e.g.
due to cable resistance, leading to some small potential
differences between non-activated electrodes,
(3) from current streamlines ranging over from an activated
transmitter to the receiver more distant columns of receiver
electrodes.
The uncertainties due to the above mentioned effects can be
assessed by simulations of the potential field in the conducting
liquid close to the electrodes. The cross-talk to receiver electrodes
located beyond the direct neighbor to the activated transmitter
has been found to increase with growing film thickness and is
limited to a few percent of the useful signal due to the large
grounded areas located between the receiver columns. This was
shown for sensors with a previous type of electrode geometry [22]
as well as for the geometry shown in Fig. 2 in [24]. More detailed
analyses require a large effort in solving the potential field for
different configurations of non-uniform liquid films, which ranges
beyond the capacity which was available for the presented work
and must stay reserved for the future.
The size of an individual measuring volume is determined by
the pitch of the electrodes. In the given sensor geometry, it is a
square surface of 2
2 mm2. The film thickness range that can be
achieved with the described geometry is about 800 μm. The sensor
presented here has electrode islands with the same basic geome-
try. The small electrodes are used as transmitters and receivers for
a high-resolution but low range film thickness measurement. This
is called “near field measurements”.
All large electrodes are connected to ground potential. In the
same time, all non-activated transmitter electrodes as well as all
receiver electrodes are kept on ground potential, too, by the low
impedance of input and output cascades of the signal acquisition
system (Fig. 1). As a matter of fact, all receiver rows in Fig. 2 are
sampled in parallel, while there is only one transmitter column
activated at a time. Ground potential at all electrodes except the
activated transmitters guarantees a maximum suppression of
cross-talk.
The concept of extending the range of the sensor consists in the
idea to sample the currents between large electrodes, too. If a large
electrode pad is connected to a low impedance receiver, the
function as grounded surface is maintained when the near field
is measured. Their potential is then actively kept on ground
potential by the input cascade. The same is true for any large
electrode that is used in a separate transmitter cycle. In instants of
activation of a column of small transmitter electrodes, the large
transmitter electrodes will be kept on ground potential by the low
impedance outputs of the driver cascades. In turn, when the large
electrodes are activated, all small electrodes are kept on ground
potential. It is thus obvious that a subsequent sampling of the
matrix of small electrodes, followed by a sampling of any matrix of
large electrodes do not interfere with each other.
This approach was used to build a second electrode matrix with
a higher measuring range interlaced to the near field matrix.
A single cell of this “middle field” matrix is shown in Fig. 3.
The center of the control volume is identical with the one formed
by the “near field” matrix. Due to the higher distance between
transmitter and receiver electrodes and the large area covered by
grounded electrodes located in between, the measuring
range is much larger, as it will be shown in detail in the
Fig. 3. Arrangement of a “middle field” electrode matrix on the sensor with the
electrode geometry shown in Fig. 2.
 R. Tiwari et al. / Flow Measurement and Instrumentation 40 (2014) 124–132 127

subsequent sections of the paper. The lateral resolution is lower. It

is characterized by the size of the square limited by symmetry
boundaries, which has an extension of 4
4 mm2 in the middle
field. Due to the bigger distance between transmitter and receiver,
the signal strength is lower, which is partially compensated by the
larger size of the electrodes.
The interlaced structure of the near field and the middle field
measuring matrices is shown in Fig. 4. Dashed squares indicate the
size of the control volumes for the transmitter-receiver pairs with
the indices i and j of both matrices, which illustrates that the
spatial resolution is twice as high in both directions in the near
field compared to the middle field. Note, that transmitters are
activated in a successive order, while receivers are all sampled
synchronously by the standards wire-mesh signal acquisition
units. The control volumes with the indices i and j are centered
to each other. Due to the higher resolution in the near field, every
second near field measurement is centered to a middle field
measurement. This means that the measuring results of the
middle field is in phase with the subset containing every second
measurement of the near field. Due to the higher film thickness
range of the middle field, at these locations the full film thickness
range both near and middle field are available and complement Fig. 5. Addition of a far field electrode matrix (near field and ground electrodes left
each other. At the rest of the near field points, only the low white for simplicity).
measuring range of the near field is available.
As it can be seen in Fig. 4, there are still numerous electrodes
on the sensor surface which are up to now only used as ground
electrodes. These electrode islands can also be connected to
transmitter outputs and receiver inputs of the signal acquisition
electronics. In this way, either an interlaced structure of middle
field measurements can be created, which allows to improve the
spatial resolution of the middle field, or a third matrix structure
with an even higher film thickness range can be organized. The
latter was done within the work presented in this paper. With a
configuration of additional transmitter and receiver electrodes as
shown in Fig. 5, a matrix with a lateral resolution of 12
12 mm2
is created, the control volumes of which are again centered to
control volumes of the near and the middle field.
The even larger distance between transmitters and receivers in
the far field measurement further reduces the amplitude of the
useful signal. For compensation, four large electrode islands are
connected to form a single transmitter or, respectively, receiver

Fig. 6. Two interlaced far fields organized by modified receiver electrode design.

electrode, as shown by the red and green squares in Fig. 5. There is

Fig. 4. Interlaced structure of the near field (NF) and the middle field (MF)
measuring matrix, T—transmitter electrodes, R—receiver electrodes.
still a number of free ground electrodes for another far field matrix
that is interlaced with the first one. This arrangement is shown in
Fig. 6. The centers of the control volumes of both far fields (FF1 and
FF2) are shifted by half of the pitch between far field electrodes, i.
e. by 6 mm in both directions. This arrangement can be realized
only with a modified arrangement of the electrodes for transmit-
ters and receivers, since the receivers of the far field two (RFF2)
have the same center of mass as the transmitters of far field one
(TFF1). They must be connected to inputs and outputs of the
electronic signal acquisition unit separately and can therefore
not be identical. The adopted solution is shown in Fig. 6.
The sensor proposed and applied in the present paper has a
near field, a middle field and two interlaced far fields. With this
electrode arrangement, the end of the available options is not yet
reached. Still, not all the big electrodes are used. They can further
be used as receiver and transmitter electrodes.
The sensors developed in this work and used for the measure-
ments have a sensitive surface of 192 mm length and a width of
52 mm. With a resolution of 2 mm of the near field electrodes,
128 R. Tiwari et al. / Flow Measurement and Instrumentation 40 (2014) 124–132

there are 96 rows of receiver and 26 rows of transmitter electro-

des. The middle-field has 48 receiver and 13 transmitter rows and
the far fields have 16 receiver and 4, respectively, 5 transmitter
rows each. In total the sensor needs therefore 176 receiver
channels and 48 transmitter channels on the signal acquisition
unit. The currently most advanced signal acquisition unit is able to
handle maximum numbers of 128 transmitters and 128 receivers
[25], which means that the full set of receiver electrodes cannot be
read out at once. The results of the test measurements presented
below were performed with subsets of receivers. Receiver lines Fig. 7. Calibration set up [23].
which were not connected to the signal acquisition in a particular
measurement were connected to ground potential. Calibration
data as well as time averaged results were obtained by repeating
the experiment under identical boundary conditions with two
different assignments of receiver lines to the signal acquisition
unit in order to cover all 176 receiver lines of the sensor. Transient
data was recorded with a subset of receivers forming a sensitive
surface covering 118 mm of the total length of 192 mm.
The available signal acquisition units allow a sampling of all
128 transmitters with a frequency of 1280 Hz. The maximum
frequency is inverse proportional to the number of connected
transmitter lines. In case of the presented tests, only 48 transmit-
ters are used, which allowed to increase the measuring rate to
3200 Hz.
Two types of sensors were built with identical electrode
structure. For the calibration, a flat sensor was produced by
normal printed circuit board (PCB) technology. The surface of the
electrodes is gold coated. The size of the sensor plate exceeds the
dimensions of the sensor matrix for practical reasons. All external
interfaces were covered by the same conductive material as the
electrodes and grounded carefully within the width of the sensor
plate. This measure approximately constitutes the symmetry Fig. 8. Measured sensor characteristics of all sets (fields).
conditions of the measuring matrix also for peripheral measuring
positions and helps suppressing the influence of external electrical
disturbances. Small boundary effects are compensated by the use third and fourth sets of electrodes form two interlaced matrices
of individual calibration data for each measuring position within that have both the same resolution. Their interval of reasonable
the sensor matrices. For the demonstration of the functionality, an sensitivity ends at 3500 mm. Beyond these limits, the sensibility
air-water flow in a horizontal pipe of 100 mm inner diameter was drops significantly because of the asymptotically decreasing slope
chosen as test object. For this reason, a second sensor was of the calibration characteristics. This leads to an amplification of
produced on flexible PCB material of 0.15 mm thickness. the error propagation from the primary measuring signal to the
film thickness.
As shown in Fig. 8, the useful measuring intervals of the three
3. Calibration different ranges are overlapping by roughly 30%. This gives a
certain flexibility of the choice of the change to the next electrode
In order to relate the signal obtained from the receiver set. On the other hand, it can be used for validating the readings of
electrodes to a thickness, a calibration is needed prior to the neighboring ranges against each other. The best way to use the
measurements. The sensor is immersed into water with an measuring ranges in an actual measurement consists in changing
inclined angle and various cylinders made of nonconductive to the next higher range at the highest possible film thickness for
material are rolled with a defined gap over the sensor (Fig. 7). which the sensibility is still reasonable, because the lower mea-
This calibration method is described in [23]. The gap is caused by a suring range has the higher spatial resolution.
small rim at both ends of the plastic cylinder. There are cylinders The parameter which is finally converted into the film thick-
with rim thicknesses between 100 mm and 1000 mm in steps of ness is the relative conductance sampled at each electrode pair.
100 mm, between 1000 mm and 2000 mm in steps of 200 mm and The relative conductance values of the calibration are fitted by an
between 2000 mm and 4500 mm in steps of 500 mm. The calibra- empirical algebraic calibration equation. An alternative consists in
tion value is taken from the minimum measured value, when the an interpolation between neighboring data points. The primary
cylinder is passing over the measuring point. The saturation value signal of the experimental data is first converted into the relative
corresponds to the value obtained when the measuring point is conductance. By applying the calibration equation, the relative
not covered with the cylinder but only water. Fig. 8 shows the conductance of the experiment is then converted into the film
measured sensor characteristic for each set of electrodes. Note that thickness for each time frame of the measurement.
calibration data is recorded for each combination of transmitter Calibration measurements were carried out both for the flat
and receiver individually. The data points shown in Fig. 8 repre- tests sensors and for the flexible sensors which were stretched out
sent results averaged over all measuring points. on a flat surface for this purpose. Later on, the flexible sensors
The signals from the near field electrodes reach about 95% of were bended and mounted into a holder to form a cylindrical
saturation at about 600 mm of film thickness, which was defined as geometry with the inner diameter of the horizontal pipe. The
upper limit of the corresponding measuring range. The electrodes maximum measuring range of 3.5 mm film thickness is equal to 7%
of the middle field approach to saturation at about 1300 mm. The of the curvature radius of 50 mm. For the demonstration of the
 R. Tiwari et al. / Flow Measurement and Instrumentation 40 (2014) 124–132
functionality of the sensor we decided to neglect the influence of
the bending on the calibration.
4. Test of the sensor in a wavy-stratified flow
For the test of the sensor, a two-phase flow was created by
injecting water and air in an 8 m long horizontal pipe with a
diameter of 0.1 m (L/D¼ 80). The air was taken from the ambient
and the water was stored in a vessel and was circulated in a closed
loop during the experiments (Fig. 9). The bendable sensor was
mounted at the inside of the pipe wall (Fig. 10) downstream of the
air–water inlet, where the flow is fully developed. The sensor was
mounted on the bottom of the circular pipe cross-section. In axial
direction, it was 70 mm long, from which 52 mm is covered by the
Fig. 9. Measurement set-up.
Fig. 10. Flexible wall sensor mounted in the pipe.
Fig. 11. Time averaged film thickness profiles measured by all three sets of electrodes individually (superficial velocity of air: 18 m/s, superficial velocity of water: 0.009 m/s,
liquid volume flow ratio: 5
10  4).
129
sensitive area of the near field. All borders of the sensor ranging
beyond the sensitive area are covered with a conductive layer
which is connected to ground potential in order to minimize
border effects. The length of the sensitive area of 192 mm occupies
an angular interval from  110 to þ 110 deg, 0 deg being at the
lowest point of the pipe cross-section. The transmitters formed
lines running in circumferential direction, receiver lines run
parallel to the pipe axis. For transient measurements, the number
of receivers was reduced to the capacity of the signal acquisition
unit. In the result, the circumferential range was reduced to
118 mm, which corresponds to an angular interval from  68 to
þ68 deg with 0 deg being at the lowest point.
All experiments were conducted at ambient temperature of
297 K and atmospheric pressure. The tests were carried out under
steady-state conditions. The measuring frequency of the liquid
film sensor was 3200 Hz.
Two-dimensional film thickness profiles shown in Fig. 11 were
obtained by time averaging of the instantaneous film thickness
measurements over a measuring sequence of 10 s. The superficial
velocities (air: 18 m/s, water 0.009 m/s ) for the demonstration of
the function of the sensor were chosen such that the variation of
the average film thickness covers all three measuring ranges. The
results are shown for all three measurement ranges individually in
Fig. 11. As expected for a steady-state stratified flow in a horizontal
pipe, the time average film thickness does not vary in flow
direction. A significant profile exists only in the circumferential
direction. In the near-field the spatial resolution is the highest. The
measurement range is up to 600 mm. Close to the lowest point of
the pipe cross-section, the film thickness exceeds the measuring
range of the near field and the signal goes to a value near
saturation at 600 mm. In the middle field the measurement range
is from 400 mm to 1300 mm. The plot on the right side of in Fig. 11
shows the far-field.
Combining the results of all three measurement set leads to the
profile shown in Fig. 12. The curve on the right side shows the
azimuthal water film thickness distribution, i.e. along the peri-
meter of the pipe. Zero corresponds to the lowest point of the pipe
cross-section. Besides the averaging over the measuring time, the
film thickness is averaged over the extension of the sensor in flow
direction.
The generation of the composite film thickness shown in Fig. 12
is illustrated in Fig. 13. The upper limit of the near field measure-
ment is shown as a red horizontal dashed line. Above this line, the
130 R. Tiwari et al. / Flow Measurement and Instrumentation 40 (2014) 124–132
Fig. 12. Measured time averaged film thickness as a composite of all three measurement sets shown in Fig. 11.
Fig. 13. Comparison of the averaged heights obtained from different sets of
electrodes for the case shown in Fig. 11 and illustration of the method to obtain
the composite (dashed symbols: beyond validity range).
middle field is used for the composite. The change to the far field
happens at the green dashed line. In the regions of overlap of the
measuring ranges, the agreement of the film thickness measured
with the different electrode sets can be tested. The overlapping
intervals are highlighted by dotted areas. It has to be noted that
the overlap in is affected by the fluctuations of the signal before
time averaging that sometimes overshoots the limits of the over-
lap even if the average stays within the limits of the region of
overlap. This leads to a certain bias of the time averaged data. The
match between far field and middle field as well as middle and
near field results is therefore less perfect in Fig. 13 than it could be
expected from the range of sensibility found in the steady-state
calibration shown in Fig. 8. Still, the convergence toward the lower
limit of the overlap region confirms the consistency of the
measurement in the fields of different measuring ranges.
In order to demonstrate the high temporal resolution (3200 Hz)
of the sensor, a series of instantaneous snapshots of the film
thickness distributions are shown in Fig. 14. The composite result
is obtained for each instantaneous frame separately. For this
purpose, a virtual matrix of the same size as near-field measuring
matrix is created. The composite is generated starting with filling
the matrix with the results from the far-field measurements. In
this step, each individual far-field result is assigned to the number
of elements in the matrix in correspondence to the sensitive area
given by the symmetry conditions. The resulting distribution if
overwritten by middle field results in those cases, when the
middle field measurement resulted in a film thickness below its
penetration depth of 1300 μm. In the last step, the elements of the
matrix are overwritten by near-field results if they are less than
the corresponding limit of 800 mm.
In the displayed series of frames, the locally varying spatial
resolution resulting from this approach can be seen by the
different size of the squares representing a local film thickness.
In those regions, where the film thickness is below the range limit
of the near field, the resolution is highest. In places of high film
thickness, the pixel size corresponds to the resolution on the far
field. Despite the high thickness measurement range, it is still
possible to resolve the flow behavior. Fig. 14 shows two large
waves passing the sensor in less than 0.2 ms. The flow direction is
from the right to the left.
5. Summary and outlook
A novel method to extend the penetration depth of an electrical
film thickness sensor is presented. The concept is based on a
measurement of small film thicknesses with high spatial resolu-
tion, combined with a detection of liquid films of higher thickness
using different electrode matrices combined in one and the same
sensor. The sensor has four sets of electrode pairs providing three
different film thickness measurement ranges. The first set of
electrodes measures liquid films up to 600 mm with a spatial
resolution of 2
2 mm2. This means that the sensor delivers data
points on a grid with the pitch of 2 mm in each direction.
Structures below this size cannot be resolved. The second pair of
electrodes has a measurement range from 400 mm to 1300 mm and
the measuring grid size is 4
4 mm2. The third and fourth sets of
electrodes measure in the range from about 900 mm to 3500 mm
 R. Tiwari et al. / Flow Measurement and Instrumentation 40 (2014) 124–132 131

Fig. 14. Sequence of instantaneous two-dimensional film thickness profiles in an experiment with roll waves (flow from the right to the left, superficial velocity of air: 42 m/
s, superficial velocity of water: 0.0165 m/s).

on a grid with the size of 12
12 mm2. The sensor can be
manufactured as a flat sensor but also in a bendable version using
flexible PCB board technology.
A calibration of the sensor was performed in order to quantify
the measuring ranges of the three interlaced electrode patterns.
For a test under realistic flow conditions, a flexible sensor was
mounted in a horizontal pipe and film thickness measurements in
a wavy stratified flow of with water and air were conducted. They
confirm the functionality of the novel sensor. The measured film
thickness values delivered by near, middle and far field electrode
132 R. Tiwari et al. / Flow Measurement and Instrumentation 40 (2014) 124–132
sets display a consistent behavior in regions where the measuring
ranges overlap.
The sensor has further potential for improvements. Not all
available electrode pads were used for conductance sampling in
the presented solution. Furthermore, studies on the theoretical
prediction of the sensor characteristics by means of electrical
potential field calculations have been started that allow a further
optimization of the electrode geometry. A further question to be
answered by potential field calculations is the spatial inhomogen-
eousity of the sensibility of the sensor, in particular in case of
electrodes composed out of several electrode pads. Another
potential direction of development is the application of capaci-
tance measurements between the electrodes of the liquid film
sensor. It was demonstrated by Da Silva et al. [26] that the
complex impedance can be recorded in case of a wire mesh sensor,
which gives raise for the hope that the same is possible for a
sensor with electrodes at the wall. This would offer the possibility
of film thickness measurements in electrically non-conducting
liquids.
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