7. State-of-the-Art Instrumentation and Experimental Methods Developed at the Industrial Multiphase Flow Laboratory over the Last 17 Years: From Gamma-Ray and Wire-Mesh Tomography to Physics-Informed Machine Learning

Research devoted to understanding, modeling, and engineering multiphase flows have been the aims of the Industrial Multiphase Flow Laboratory (LEMI), located in the countryside of the state of São Paulo for nearly two decades now. The accurate determination of the spatial distribution of the phases in multicomponent and turbulent flows in big pipes using a homemade wire-mesh tomographic system, through which the phase fraction and the flow pattern involved can be obtained, the synchronized use of state-of-the-art equipment (PIV, wire-mesh sensor, and high-speed video camera) for the detailed study of turbulence in annular ducts, and the application of collimated gamma-ray densitometry for measurement of interfacial geometrical properties of stratified flows are among the achievements of the LEMI’s team that are described in the paper. In addition, full-scale experiments and recent developments in which data-driven and physics-informed machine learning techniques were used to predict two-phase flow parameters are discussed. The use of artificial intelligence is a new trend in our field of investigation and the results, although promising, indicate that physics is still necessary as big data are not available in many important engineering applications.