Multiresolution Multiplex Network for Analyzing Multichannel Fluid Flow Signals

Gas-liquid two-phase flow widely exists in chemical industries and natural gas industries. But characterizing the nonlinear flow behaviors underlying such flow remains a challenge of great importance. In this brief, we first carry out the vertical gas-liquid two-phase flow experiment in a 50mm-inner-diameter pipe to acquire signals via the four-sector conductance measurement system. Then, we develop a multiresolution multiplex network (MMN) to analyze multichannel measurements. In particular, we employ average edge overlap to quantitatively characterize the derived network corresponding to different flow patterns. Results show that our method allows to effectively uncover the evolution from bubble flow to slug flow. In addition, we calculate the approximate entropy of different flow patterns to verify the findings from our network analysis. All the results demonstrate that our proposed method allows characterizing the nonlinear flow behaviors from multichannel measurements and also provides a novel way for multivariate time series analysis.