Electrical Resistance Tomography for Suspended Sediment Measurements in Open Channel Flows Using a Novel Sensor Design

Electrical Resistance tomography (ERT) has been previously employed to measure sediment concentrations in liquids (Bolton et al. [1], James et al. [2], Qiu et al. [3]), and linear sensors were the first type of sensor employed in previous tomographic applications (Qiu et al. [4]). However, ERT has mostly been used in cylindrical vessels or pipes with a circular sensor around the area of interest. Such sensors would thus disturb the flow when attempting to measure solids concentration in an open channel flow with a free upper surface. The present study is part of a larger project that is investigating the fluid dynamics of water flows that have a behaviour transitional between laminar and turbulent (J. Baas et al. [5]). In order to quantify the fluid dynamics of such flows, the use and development of ERT is investigated to allow real-time quantification of solids concentration and stratification. This paper explores the feasibility of using ERT methods for measuring suspended sediment concentrations and estimation of the thickness of layers of deposited sediment. The research reported herein focuses mainly on the sensor design with limited efforts expended on hardware and software development. Part. Part. Syst. Charact. 23 (2006) 313–320 313