To explore the influence of different wax components and the shear effect exerted by the pump and pipe wall in the process of crude oil pipeline transportation on the microbehavior of wax aggregation in crude oil at low temperatures, molecular dynamics models of binary and multivariate systems of crude oil with different wax components are established in this paper. The simulation results are compared with the existing experimental results and the NIST database to verify the rationality and accuracy of the models. By using the established binary model to simulate four crude oil systems containing different wax components, it can be found that the longer the wax molecular chain, the more easily the wax molecules aggregate. The influence of temperature on the aggregation process of wax molecules with different chain lengths is also studied. The lower the temperature, the greater the difference in wax molecular aggregation degree caused by the difference in molecular chain length. Nonequilibrium molecular dynamics is used to simulate the shear process of a multivariate system of crude oil, and the micromechanisms of the shear effect on the aggregation process of wax molecules are studied. Shearing can destroy the stable structure of crude oil, resulting in the orientation and conformational transformation of wax molecules, and obtaining the region of wax molecules sensitive to temperature and shear effects, the temperatures of which are below the wax precipitation point and the shear rate of which is lower than the maximum shear rate to prevent the molecular structure from being destroyed. At the same time, the sensitivity of wax components with different chain lengths to the shear effect is studied. The research results provide theoretical guidance for ensuring the safe and economic operation of waxy crude oil production.
The generation and propagation mechanisms of acoustic waves from leakage below the annular liquid level in gas wells have attracted widespread attention. To study the characteristics of acoustic sources beneath the liquid level, a physical model of leakage in the casing–tubing annulus was established by simulating the distribution patterns of the flow field and acoustic field within the annulus under tubing leakage conditions. Distinct from the traditional acoustic analysis of wellbore leakage in gas wells, this study focuses on acoustic waves generated by leaks located below the annular protection fluid level. It analyzes the flow regime and acoustic source characteristics beneath the liquid level under various operating conditions (including leakage aperture, velocity, and position). The research summarizes the evolution patterns of flow regimes when gas leaks into the annular protection fluid under different conditions and elucidates the generation mechanism of sub-liquid leakage noise and its propagation mechanism across the liquid surface. This work lays the theoretical foundation for detecting sub-liquid leakage at the wellhead using acoustic methods.
A mechanical structure of a fiber Fabry–Perot interferometric vibration sensor for monitoring oil and gas pipelines has been proposed, and design analysis research on performance improvement has been carried out. By designing a serpentine beam structure, the mechanical sensitivity of the sensor is enhanced. Meanwhile, by designing a vertically symmetrical gravity-sensing structure, the cross-axis sensitivity of the sensor is reduced. The results of simulation analysis show that the mechanical sensitivity of the proposed design structure is 89.20 μm/g, which is 32.44 times that of the conventional structure. Moreover, due to the design of low cross-axis sensitivity, the optical sensitivity of the vibration sensor will not be degraded because of its installation status on the pipeline. The proposed mechanical structure provides a design reference for the application of the fiber Fabry–Perot interferometric vibration sensor on oil and gas pipelines, and offers potential for the development of a high-performance comprehensive safety risk monitoring system for oil and gas pipelines.
22 July 2026 in Measurement Science and Technology
Most of the existing non-contact measurement methods for combustion temperature rely on simplified or even idealized thermal-optical radiation models, where the spectral emissivity of the flame medium is often treated as a constant or a simplified univariate function under certain conditions. This introduces significant uncertainty into temperature inversion. In this paper, a temperature measurement method for gaseous flames is proposed by integrating laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) with high-sensitivity digital imaging. A high-temperature-resistant graphite filament array is used as the temperature-sensitive probe. LIBS is employed to analyze the spectral characteristics of the probe material and identify its characteristic wavelength. To reduce the uncertainty associated with assumed emissivity values, a cavity-assisted narrowband emissivity calibration experiment is designed using a graphite reference cavity made of the same material as the probe. Based on the calibrated emissivity-related function and the radiative intensity of the probe under high-temperature conditions, the two-dimensional temperature distribution of an oxygen–ethanol premixed flame is determined from sCMOS narrowband images. Furthermore, an invalid-region interpolation algorithm is developed to reconstruct the continuous temperature field from the temperature data of probes at different heights. Experimental results show that the flame temperature ranges from 890.5–1303.7 K, and the relative error is within 5.3% compared with thermocouple measurements.