ID 357

A Numerical Study on Primary Breakup of Power-Law Liquid Jets in a Subsonic Gaseous Crossflow

 

Abstract:

Numerical modeling of the primary breakup of the round nonturbulent power-law liquid jets in a subsonic gaseous crossflow is presented in the current study. The volume of fluid method together with the large eddy simulation turbulence model available in the CFD open source solver library (OpenFOAM®) are used to capture the liquid-gas interface and to model the primary atomization precisely. The volume fraction in this solver is advected algebraically using an artificial compression scheme. Crossflow Reynolds number, liquid Reynolds number, crossflow Weber number, momentum flux ratio, and liquid-to-gas density ratio are kept constant and equal to 5.7e5, 14079, 330, 6.6, and 10, respectively. Five different cases are run to fundamentally study the effects of various parameters related to the liquid viscosity such as liquid consistency coefficient and power-law index on the spray trajectory, column breakup point location, surface wavelength, and breakup onset. It is shown that the waves’ structure on the column surface, and the location of column breakup point depend on the liquid viscosity function. Our simulations show that the surface wavelength and the column breakup point slightly decrease as the power-law index reduces from 1 to 0.5. However, by decreasing the power-law index from 0.5 to 0.1, the consistency coefficient increases considerably, and as a result, the surface wavelength and the column breakup point do not change noticeably. Our simulations also reveal that the spray trajectory is not very sensitive to the power-law index, liquid consistency coefficient, and other parameters related to the liquid viscosity.