Numerical simulation of forward problem for electrical capacitance tomography using element-free Galerkin method

Electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) is a new measurement technology, which is often used to identify two-phase/multi-phase flow regime and investigate the solid distribution in circulating fluidized bed. It is composed of forward problem and inverse problem. Usually, forward problem is solved using finite element method (FEM). Element-free Galerkin method (EFGM) is one of the meshless methods developed recently. In order to obtain the numerical solution using EFGM, a shape function is constructed by moving least-squares (MLS) approximation, a variational equation weak form of the studied problem is used to deduce the discrete equation, and Lagrange multipliers are used to satisfy essential boundary conditions. In EFGM, only nodal data are necessary compared with FEM. In this paper, EFGM was used to solve forward problem and simulation results showed EFGM has high accuracy and its post-processing is easy.