Measurements of interfacial dynamics of gas–liquid displacement in a capillary

Measurement of liquid film thickness in gas–liquid plug/slug flows is a challenging task. A novel laser interference method for measuring the interfacial film thickness of gas–liquid displacement in a plug flow has been developed. This novel technique utilizes light scattering from different liquid/gas interfaces in forming interference fringes. The interference fringes are used for calculating the film thickness. A set of simultaneous equations is derived based on geometrical optics. The experiment set up is not complex and is easy to install. The fringes are recorded by a charge-coupled device high speed camera and the image data are calculated using fast Fourier transform (FFT) and a non-linear least squares Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm. The uncertainty of this measurement technique is quite small (0.3 μ m) and the entire film thickness profile can be measured at the same time. (paper)