Development of the five-sensor conductivity probe method for the measurement of the interfacial area concentration Original Research Article

The interfacial area concentration (IAC) is one of the most important parameters in the two-fluid model for two-phase flow analysis. The purpose of this study is to develop the local IAC measuring method by using the five-sensor conductivity probe. In this paper, the mathematical approach of the five-sensor conductivity probe method for measuring the local time averaged IAC is described, and numerical simulations are carried out for cap bubbles and two types of ellipsoidal bubbles, as well as spherical bubbles, in order to evaluate the new method. The sizes and locations of the bubbles are determined by using random number generators. To investigate the probe size effect on the accuracy of IAC measurement, three cases for length scales of the probe are applied to the simulations. The simulations show that the five-sensor conductivity probe method proposed in this paper produces better results than the four-sensor method.