Reweighting Signal Spectra to Improve Spatial Sensitivity for an Electrostatic Sensor

The ring-shaped electrostatic sensor is a gas–solid flow measurement system, which has a problem of flow profile dependency. To deal with this problem, a method was introduced in this paper, which was to repeatedly use the successive “tails” of the sensor’s overall output power spectrum to identify elementary frequency components corresponding to the equivalent roping flow streams. From the radial locations of these equivalent flow streams, the decomposed power frequency spectral components were then reweighted accordingly. Through such signal processing, an improved electrostatic sensor spatial sensitivity was achieved without modifying the sensor’s structure. The method of interpolation was presented and discussed, and the effect of velocity profile on the proposed method was evaluated under different velocity profiles.