A digital twin of electrical tomography for quantitative multiphase flow imaging

Abstract Multiphase flow is ubiquitous in nature, industry and research, and accurate flow imaging is critical to understanding this complex phenomenon. Electrical tomography (ET) is a promising technique for multiphase flow visualization and characterization which provides a non-invasive and non-radiative way to unravel the internal physical properties at high temporal resolution. However, existing ET-based multiphase flow imaging methods are inadequate for quantitative imaging of multiphase flows due to inversion errors and limited ground truth data of fluid phases distribution. Here we report a digital twin (DT) framework of ET to address the challenges of real-time quantitative multiphase flow imaging. The proposed DT framework, building upon a synergistic integration of 3D field coupling simulation, model-based deep learning, and edge computing, allows ET to dynamically learn the flow features in the virtual space and implement the model in the physical system, thus providing excellent resolution and accuracy. The proposed DT framework is demonstrated using electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) of a gas-liquid two-phase flow. It can be readily extended to a broader range of tomography modalities, scenarios, and scales in biomedical, energy, and aerospace applications.