A meshless improved boundary distributed source method for two-phase flow monitoring using electrical resistance tomography

This paper presents a meshless method based on the improved boundary distributed source method (IBDS) to monitor two-phase flow in pipes using electrical resistance tomography (ERT). The conductivity of background liquid is assumed to be known a priori while the shape and location of the voids are the unknowns to be determined. The forward problem of ERT is solved using meshless IBDS method and the voids location and shape are reconstructed using Levenberg–Marquardt method. IBDS method is purely meshless and places its source and field points on the same physical boundary unlike conventional method of fundamental solution approach. Moreover, the elements of system matrix corresponding to Neumann and Dirichlet boundary conditions are evaluated analytically; therefore the IBDS method is computationally efficient that gives an accurate and stable solution. Numerical and experimental results with single and multiple voids are shown and the performance of IBDS method is compared with the boundary element method (BEM) in monitoring two-phase flow.