Sparse Local Fisher Discriminant Analysis for Gas-Water Two-Phase Flow Status Monitoring With Multisensor Signals

Gas-water two-phase flow has typically stable flow statuses and constantly changing transition flow statuses. Accurate identification and real-time monitoring of flow status are conducive to the in-depth study of two-phase flow and the safe operation of industrial process. A monitoring strategy based on sparse local Fisher discriminant analysis (SLFDA) is proposed in this article. First, multisensor signals are obtained to reflect flow process information. Second, the least absolute shrinkage and selection operator is used to find the sparse discriminant directions to determine the key variables relevant to the flow process from multiple sensor signals. Then, the weight coefficient matrixes of SLFDA keep the original structure of the same flow status data and make the data of different flow statuses more separated, which distinguish different flow statuses to the maximum extent. Finally, two monitoring indexes including the discriminant index and the stability index are established to analyze the dynamic flow process, which enable a concurrent monitoring of both flow evolution and instability to realize fine-scale description of flow process. SLFDA can monitor various flow statuses through only one projection discriminant matrix by transforming high-dimensional signals into features representing the flow characteristics, which avoids model traversal and improves monitoring efficiency. Further study of flow status features provides meaningful physical interpretation and in-depth process analysis with consideration of actual flow process. The application on the data of gas-water two-phase flow in horizontal pipe demonstrates the feasibility and efficacy of the method.