Development of temperature profile sensor at high temporal and spatial resolution

In order to quantify thermo-physical flow field for the industrial applications such as nuclear and chemical reactors, high temporal and spatial measurements for temperature, pressure, phase velocity, viscosity and so on are required to validate computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and subchannel analyses. The paper proposes a novel temperature profile sensor, which can acquire temperature distribution in water at high temporal (a millisecond) and spatial (millimeter) resolutions. The devised sensor acquires electric conductance between transmitter and receiver wires, which is a function of temperature. The sensor comprise wire mesh structure for multipoint and simultaneous temperature measurement in water, which indicated that three-dimensional temperature distribution can be detected in flexible resolutions. For the demonstration of the principle, temperature profile in water was estimated according to predetermined temperature calibration line against time-averaged impedance. The 16×16 grid sensor visualized fast and multi-dimensional mixing process of a hot water jet into a cold water pool.