To overcome the difficulties in measuring the oil-water two-phase flow

the oil-water two-phase flow regime was studied with a horizontal Venturi tube and a model of flow measurement was established.A flow regime identification method combining Hilbert-Huang transform (HHT) with support vector machine (SVM) was developed

based on the differential pressure signals obtained from the Venturi tube.With this method

the root mean square of the differential pressure signal was calculated and used as one of the characteristic vectors after it was normalized.Meanwhile

the differential pressure signal was handled with Hilbert-Huang transform.The energy ratios of the first and the second layers were obtained as the other two characteristic vectors closely associated with the flow regime

by using the multi-resolution feature of the empirical mode analysis.Then

the flow regime was identified with SVM

and better results were obtained.The oil-water flow measurement could be better made if flow regime identification was combined with the model of the oil-water two-phase flow measurement using a Venturi tube.