Characterizing Heterogeneous Flow Patterns Using Information Measurements

The objective of this study was to characterize heterogeneous flow patterns using the information theory. The information content of heterogeneous flow was measured with Shannon information entropy and the main information gain, and the flow complexity was measured with the effective measure complexity and fluctuation complexity. The mean information gain, the effective measure complexity and fluctuation complexity increased with the information entropy for the flow sequence. As more heterogeneity information was included, the flow system became more complex and uncertain. The information measures appeared to be a more versatile tool to describe heterogeneous flow patterns.