Droplet Streams and Interference Effects

Abstract

This work investigates the effect of droplet interaction on the physical transport characteristics during vaporization and combustion of an infinite stream of droplets.

Analytical transformations are developed so that the solutions can be sought in a regular domain and mesh points can be clustered in regions with high gradient. The transformed equations are discretized, leading to an algebraic system of equations solved using scientific routines libraries. The transformations are then inverted and the profiles within the physical domain obtained for the quantities of interest.

For the nonreacting case, the results indicate that the vaporization rate of a droplet in a stream can be obtained from the isolated droplet vaporization case times a function depending on the interdroplet distance. For the reacting case, preliminary results show that this trend is also observed for small droplet spacing, but a small increase in the mass vaporization rate can be observed for large spacings, before the individual flames merge into a single one surrounding the stream.

The combustion results have been obtained assuming an infinitely fast reaction rate (flame sheet approximation). The finite-chemistry case is under investigation.

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This page was setup by Albino Leiroz (ajleiroz@uci.edu) - Last Update : 3/18/96