An experimental and numerical study into turbulent condensing steam jets in air

 Temperatures, velocities, and droplet sizes are measured in turbulent condensing steam jets produced by a facial sauna, for varying nozzle diameters and varying initial velocities (Re=3,600–9,200). The release of latent heat due to droplet condensation causes the temperature in the two-phase jet to be significantly higher than in a single-phase jet. At some distance from the nozzle, droplets reach a maximum size and start to evaporate again, which results in a change in sign of latent heat release. The distance of maximum size is determined from droplet size measurements. The experimental results are compared with semi-analytical expressions and with a fully coupled numerical model of the turbulent condensing steam jet. The increase in centreline temperature due to droplet condensation is successfully predicted. Received: 5 April 2000 / Accepted: 15 November 2000     

Large-Eddy Simulation of Interactions Between a Reacting Jet and Evaporating Droplets

Large-eddy simulation of a turbulent reactive jet with and without evaporating droplets is performed to investigate the interactions among turbulence, combustion, heat transfer and evaporation. A hybrid Eulerian–Lagrangian approach is used for the gas–liquid flow system. Arrhenius-type finite-rate chemistry is employed for the chemical reaction. To capture the highly local interactions, dynamic procedures are used for all the subgrid-scale models, except that the filtered reaction rate is modelled by a scale similarity model. Various representative cases with different initial droplet sizes (St ₀) and mass loading ratios (MLR) have been simulated, along with a case without droplets. It is found that compared with the bigger, slow responding droplets (St ₀ = 16), smaller droplets (St ₀ = 1) are more efficient in suppressing combustion due to their preferential concentration in the reaction zones. The peak temperature and intensity of temperature fluctuations are found to be reduced in all the droplet cases, to a varying extent depending on the droplet properties. Detailed analysis on the contributions of respective terms in a transport equation for grid-scale kinetic energy (GSKE) shows that the droplet evaporation effect on GSKE is small, while the droplet momentum effect depends on St ₀. When the MLR is sufficiently high, the bigger (St ₀ = 16) droplets can have profound influence on GSKE, and consequently on the formation and evolution of large-scale flow structures. On the other hand, the turbulence level is found to be lower in the droplet cases than in the pure flame case, due to the dissipative droplet dynamic effect.     

Spray features in the near field of a flow-blurring injector investigated by high-speed visualization and time-resolved PIV

In a flow-blurring (FB) injector, atomizing air stagnates and bifurcates at the gap upstream of the injector orifice. A small portion of the air penetrates into the liquid supply line to create a turbulent two-phase flow. Pressure drop across the injector orifice causes air bubbles to expand and burst thereby disintegrating the surrounding liquid into a fine spray. In previous studies, we have demonstrated clean and stable combustion of alternative liquid fuels, such as biodiesel, straight vegetable oil and glycerol by using the FB injector without requiring fuel pre-processing or combustor hardware modification. In this study, high-speed visualization and time-resolved particle image velocimetry (PIV) techniques are employed to investigate the FB spray in the near field of the injector to delineate the underlying mechanisms of atomization. Experiments are performed using water as the liquid and air as the atomizing gas for air to liquid mass ratio of 2.0. Flow visualization at the injector exit focused on a field of view with physical dimensions of 2.3 mm × 1.4 mm at spatial resolution of 7.16 µm per pixel, exposure time of 1 µs, and image acquisition rate of 100 k frames per second. Image sequences illustrate mostly fine droplets indicating that the primary breakup by FB atomization likely occurs within the injector itself. A few larger droplets appearing mainly at the injector periphery undergo secondary breakup by Rayleigh–Taylor instabilities. Time-resolved PIV is applied to quantify the droplet dynamics in the injector near field. Plots of instantaneous, mean, and root-mean-square droplet velocities are presented to reveal the secondary breakup process. Results show that the secondary atomization to produce fine and stable spray is complete within a few diameters from the injector exit. These superior characteristics of the FB injector are attractive to achieve clean combustion of different fuels in practical systems.     

Simultaneous density-field visualization and PIV of a shock-accelerated gas curtain

We describe a highly-detailed experimental characterization of the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability (the impulsively driven Rayleigh-Taylor instability) (Meshkov 1969; Richtmyer 1960). In our experiment, a vertical curtain of heavy gas (SF₆) flows into the test section of an air-filled, horizontal shock tube. The instability evolves after a Mach 1.2 shock passes through the curtain. For visualization, we pre-mix the SF₆ with a small (∼10⁻⁵) volume fraction of sub-micron-sized glycol/water droplets. A horizontal section of the flow is illuminated by a light sheet produced by a combination of a customized, burst-mode Nd:YAG laser and a commercial pulsed laser. Three CCD cameras are employed in visualization. The “dynamic imaging camera” images the entire test section, but does not detect the individual droplets. It produces a sequence of instantaneous images of local droplet concentration, which in the post-shock flow is proportional to density. The gas curtain is convected out of the test section about 1 ms after the shock passes through the curtain. A second camera images the initial conditions with high resolution, since the initial conditions vary from test to test. The third camera, “PIV camera,” has a spatial resolution sufficient to detect the individual droplets in the light sheet. Images from this camera are interrogated using Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) to recover instantaneous snapshots of the velocity field in a small (19 × 14 mm) field of view. The fidelity of the flow-seeding technique for density-field acquisition and the reliability of the PIV technique are both quantified in this paper. In combination with wide-field density data, PIV measurements give us additional physical insight into the evolution of the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability in a problem which serves as an excellent test case for general transition-to-turbulence studies. Received: 26 June 1999/Accepted: 29 October 1999     

Spray analysis of a gasoline direct injector by means of two-phase PIV

The hollow-cone spray of a high-pressure swirl injector for a direct-injection spark-ignition (DISI) engine was investigated inside a pressure vessel by means of particle image velocimetry (PIV). As the interaction between the spray droplets and the ambient air is of particular interest for the mixture preparation process, two-phase PIV techniques were applied. To allow phase discrimination, fluorescent seeding particles were used to trace the gas phase. Because of the periodicity of piston engine injection, a statistical evaluation of ensemble-averaged fields to reduce cycle-to-cycle variations and to provide more general information about the two-phase flow was performed. Besides the general spray/air interaction process the investigation of the spray collapse at elevated ambient pressures was the main focus of the study. Future investigations of transient interaction processes require simultaneous techniques in combination with a high-speed camera to resolve the transient interaction phenomena. Therefore, optical filters that attenuate Mie-scattered light and transmit fluorescent light were used to collect both phases on the same image. Consequently, phase separation techniques were employed for data analysis. A masking and a peak separation technique are described and a comparison between the results of an instantaneous two-phase flow field in the spray cone of a DISI injector is presented in the paper.     

An experimental study of a water droplet impinging on a liquid surface

An experimental study is presented for water droplet impingement on a liquid surface. The impaction process was recorded using a high-speed digital camera at 1,000 frames/s. The initial droplet diameter was fixed at 3.1 mm ± 0.1 mm, and all experiments were performed in atmospheric air. The impact velocity was varied from 0.36 m/s to 2.2 m/s thus varying the impact Weber number from 5.5 to 206. The impacted liquid surface consisted of two fluids, namely water and methoxy-nonafluorobutane, C₄F₉OCH₃ (HFE7100). The depth of the water and HFE7100 pool was varied from 2 mm to 25 mm. The collision dynamics of water in the HFE7100 pool was observed to be drastically different from that observed for the water droplet impingement on a water pool. The critical impact Weber number for jet breakup was found to be independent of liquid depth. Water–HFE7100 impact resulted in no jet breakup over the range of velocities studied. Therefore, no critical impact Weber number can be defined for water–HFE7100 impact. Received: 27 June 2001/Accepted: 29 November 2001     

Simultaneous planar measurement of droplet velocity and size with gas phase velocities in a spray by combined ILIDS and PIV techniques

A new approach for simultaneous planar measurement of droplet velocity and size with gas phase velocities is reported, which combines the out-of-focus imaging technique ‘Interferometric Laser Imaging Droplet Sizing’ (ILIDS) for planar simultaneous droplet size and velocity measurements with the in-focus technique ‘Particle Image Velocimetry’ (PIV) for gas velocity measurements in the vicinity of individual droplets. Discrimination between the gas phase seeding and the droplets is achieved in the PIV images by removing the glare points of focused droplet images, using the droplet position obtained through ILIDS processing. Combination of the two optical arrangements can result in a discrepancy in the location of the centre of a droplet, when imaging through ILIDS and PIV techniques, of up to about 1 mm, which may lead to erroneous identification of the glare points from droplets on the PIV images. The magnitude of the discrepancy is a function of position of the droplet’s image on the CCD array and the degree of defocus, but almost independent of droplet size. Specifically, it varies approximately linearly across the image along the direction corresponding to the direction of propagation of the laser sheet for a given defocus setting in ILIDS. The experimental finding is supported by a theoretical analysis, which was based on geometrical optics for a simple optical configuration that replicates the essential features of the optical system. The discrepancy in the location was measured using a monodisperse droplet generator, and this was subtracted from the droplet centres identified in the ILIDS images of a polydisperse spray without ‘seeding’ particles. This reduced the discrepancy between PIV and ILIDS droplet centres from about 1 mm to about 0.1 mm and hence increased the probability of finding the corresponding fringe patterns on the ILIDS image and glare points on the PIV image. In conclusion, it is shown that the proposed combined method can discriminate between droplets and ‘seeding’ particles and is capable of two-phase measurements in polydisperse sprays.     

Measurements of concentration per size class in a dense polydispersed jet using planar laser-induced fluorescence and phase Doppler techniques

In dense two-phase flows, it is well known that phase Doppler anemometry is not well suited for the measurement of concentration and mass flux. Laser diagnostics based on fluorescence can provide the dispersed phase concentration but without discrimination between size classes. We present a new method of coupling the two techniques, in order to extract the local value of concentration and flux per size class. The method is applied to an axisymmetric turbulent jet, laden with polydispersed droplets 1–90 μm. Droplet concentration profiles are obtained in the development zone (x/d ₀ < 20) of the dense jet and are used to study droplet dispersion. The results are then introduced into the momentum transport equations to analyze the influence of droplets on the carrier phase. We show that the local decrease of the rate of variation of mean momentum with mass loading is due both to an increase in interfacial transfer rate and to a decrease in turbulent diffusion effects. Received: 20 November 2000 / Accepted: 3 April 2001     

Droplet evaporation on porous and non-porous ceramic solids heated from top

 This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation, of the effect of radiation heat, on the evaporation of five droplet sizes of pure water, softly deposited on porous and non-porous ceramic solids, at temperature ranging from 75 to 250 °C. Both solids were instrumented with several surface and in-depth thermocouples, and had the same thermal properties. Results show that, the droplet evaporation time, and the surface recovery time for the porous solid were shorter than that of non-porous solid for the same droplet size under identical conditions. Also, smaller droplets were more efficient for cooling both solids. The results were compared with data for the evaporation of water droplets on similar ceramic solids heated from bottom (Abu-Zaid M; Atreya A (1994) J Heat Transfer 116: 694–701). The comparison shows that, the heat radiation has a significant effect of reducing evaporation time, recovery time, and droplet volume of influence for both solids, at the same initial surface temperature. Received on 6 December 1999 / Published online: 29 November 2001     

Atomization and spray characteristics of bioethanol and bioethanol blended gasoline fuel injected through a direct injection gasoline injector

The focus of this study was to investigate the spray characteristics and atomization performance of gasoline fuel (G100), bioethanol fuel (E100), and bioethanol blended gasoline fuel (E85) in a direct injection gasoline injector in a gasoline engine. The overall spray and atomization characteristics such as an axial spray tip penetration, spray width, and overall SMD were measured experimentally and predicted by using KIVA-3V code.The development process and the appearance timing of the vortices in the test fuels were very similar. In addition, the numerical results accurately described the experimentally observed spray development pattern and shape, the beginning position of the vortex, and the spray breakup on the spray surface. Moreover, the increased injection pressure induced the occurrence of a clear circular shape in the downstream spray and a uniform mixture between the injected spray droplets and ambient air. The axial spray tip penetrations of the test fuels were similar, while the spray width and spray cone angle of E100 were slightly larger than the other fuels. In terms of atomization performance, the E100 fuel among the tested fuels had the largest droplet size because E100 has a high kinematic viscosity and surface tension.     

Effects of the particle residence time and the spray droplet size on the particle removal efficiencies in a wet scrubber

A new type of scrubbing system equipped with air-atomized spray nozzles, full cone type spray nozzles and the maze shape channels has been developed and the mass transfer mechanism to remove sub-micron particles is analyzed. There is a minimal time duration for the mixture of air and sprayed water droplets should remain in the scrubbing zone for the sub-micron particles and hydrogen fluoride (HF) gas to diffuse and be captured by water droplets. The grown water droplets enter the maze shape channels which have sharp corners and bends to eliminate the water droplets by collision with the walls. As a result of applying the developed design methodology, the sub-micron particle removal efficiencies of the scrubber are found to be above 99% for the particles of 0.5–1 μm, 96% for those of 0.3–0.5 μm, and 86% for those smaller than 0.3 μm in diameter under the optimum operating condition.     

LDA/PDA measurements of instantaneous characteristics in high pressure fuel injection and swirl spray

 Transient dynamics of two injection flows, upstream and downstream a swirl injector, are investigated. Capillary n-heptane pipe flow is measured using laser Doppler anemometer to obtain instantaneous time series of centerline velocity and to reconstruct series of instantaneous and integrated flow rates and pressure gradient. A collimated laser sheet and a high-speed video camera visualize injected spray flow. Finally, the phase Doppler anemometer measurements are introduced to analyze instantaneous patterns of droplets velocity-size and number density into fuel spray. All measurements are employed at similar temporal resolution close to 30 μs. Results indicate that both flows are strongly time-dependent and well correlated in time-phases. Initial transitions are completed by 100 μs. Opening or closing of the injector valve affects both flows as strong delta oscillation causes spray penetration dynamics and a post injection effect. A combination of intrusive laser-based techniques allows indication of the basic injection and spraying characteristics need to optimize high-pressure fuel injectors and combustion late injection mode at a high speed. Received: 19 December 1998/Accepted: 13 August 1998     

On simulations investigating droplet diameter–charge distributions in electrostatically atomized dielectric liquid sprays

A general procedure has been developed for the simulation of charged liquid and electrostatically atomized sprays. The procedure follows a Lagrangian approach for simulation of spray droplets and a Eulerian approach for gas‐phase variables, including the electric field generated by the charge presence on droplets. Validation of the procedure was examined through simulations of previously published charged spray experiments. Results showed that for the specification of initial droplet charge, modelling the droplet charge–diameter relationship through a scaling law is as reliable a method as using a directly obtained charge–diameter relationship from experimental measurements. The normalized root‐mean‐square errors for sprays using the two methods were shown to be within 12% of one another, for the prediction of spatially averaged profiles of mean droplet diameters, mean axial velocities and mean radial droplet velocities. Results showed that the general spatial characteristics and dynamics of a charged liquid spray can successfully be reproduced, including the axial and radial dispersal pattern of droplets and the distribution of mean droplet diameters throughout the spray plume. For all sprays with droplet charges defined through a scaling law relationship, the normalized root‐mean‐square errors range from 9.0% to 31.6% for mean droplet diameters, 10.4% to 67.9% for mean axial droplet velocities and 16.8% to 38.6% for mean radial droplet velocities. Lastly, we present a brief set of general recommendations for simulating electrostatically atomized dielectric liquid sprays.Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Numerical and experimental investigation on droplet dynamics and dispersion of a jet engine injector

In the case of turbine combustors operating with liquid fuel the combustion process is governed by the liquid fuel atomization and its dispersion in the combustion chamber. By highly unsteady flow field conditions the transient interaction between the liquid and the gaseous phase is of interest, because it results in a temporal variation of air–fuel ratio which leads to a fluctuating temperature distribution. The objective of this research was the investigation of transient flow field phenomena (e.g. large coherent structures) on droplet dynamics and dispersion of an isothermal flow (of inert water droplets) as a necessary first step towards a full analysis of spray combustion in real-life devices. The advanced injector system for lean jet engine combustors PERM (Partial Evaporated Rapid Mixing) was applied, generating a dilute polydispersed spray in a swirled flow field. Experiments were performed using Phase Doppler Anemometry (PDA) and a patternator to determine the droplet polydispersity, concentration maps, and velocity profiles in the flow. An important finding is the effect of large-scale coherent structures due mainly to the precessing of the vortex core (PVC) of the swirling air jet on the particle dispersion patterns. The experimental results then serve as reference data to assess the accuracy of the Eulerian–Lagrangian computations using a Large Eddy Simulation (LES), a Unsteady Reynolds-Average Navier–Stokes Simulation (URANS) and two simplified (steady-state) simulations. There, a simplified droplet injection model was used and the required boundary conditions of injected droplet sizes were obtained from measurements. Important transient effects of deterministic droplet separation observed during experiments, could be perfectly replicated with this injection model. It is convincingly shown, through extensive computations, that the resolution of instantaneous vortical structures is indeed crucial; hence the LES, or a reasonably-well resolved URANS are preferred over the steady-state solutions with additional, stochastic-type, turbulent dispersion models.     

The spray characteristics of a pressure-swirl injector with various exit plane tilts

The gasoline spray characteristics of a pressure-swirl injector were investigated with various exit plane tilts. The analysis focused on the correlation between tilt angle and flow angle. Mie-scattering technique and phase Doppler anemometry were employed to analyze the macroscopic spray development and droplet size distribution of the spray. An analytical method for mass flux estimation was applied to understand the velocity distribution at the nozzle exit. The results showed that the spray shape and velocity distribution of the spray were more asymmetrical at high tilt angles. In particular, an opened hollow cone spray was formed when the tilt angle is greater than the complementary flow angle. The pressure drop inside the spray, one of the crucial factors for the swirl spray collapse at various surrounding conditions, was attenuated in this opened hollow cone spray since the pressure inside the spray was assimilated to the surrounding air pressure. The spray collapse at high fuel temperature and back pressure conditions did not appear when the tilt angle is larger than the complementary flow angle due to the reduced pressure drop inside the spray. However, tilt angle should be optimized to fulfill the requirements of spray robustness and avoid the locally rich area. The droplet size of 70° tilted nozzle spray shows a value similar to that of the original swirl spray in the plane that includes nozzle axis and the major axis of exit surface ellipse (Major axis plane) while it shows an increased value in the plane that includes nozzle axis and the minor axis of exit surface ellipse (Minor axis plane).     

Influence of coolant injector configuration on film cooling effectiveness for gaseous and liquid film coolants

An experimental investigation is conducted to bring out the effects of coolant injector configuration on film cooling effectiveness, film cooled length and film uniformity associated with gaseous and liquid coolants. A series of measurements are performed using hot air as the core gas and gaseous nitrogen and water as the film coolants in a cylindrical test section simulating a thrust chamber. Straight and compound angle injection at two different configurations of 30°–10° and 45°–10° are investigated for the gaseous coolant. Tangential injection at 30° and compound angle injection at 30°–10° are examined for the liquid coolant. The analysis is based on measurements of the film-cooling effectiveness and film uniformity downstream of the injection location at different blowing ratios. Measured results showed that compound angle configuration leads to lower far-field effectiveness and shorter film length compared to tangential injection in the case of liquid film cooling. For similar injector configurations, effectiveness along the stream wise direction showed flat characteristics initially for the liquid coolant, while it was continuously dropping for the gaseous coolant. For liquid coolant, deviations in temperature around the circumference are very low near the injection point, but increases to higher values for regions away from the coolant injection locations. The study brings out the existance of an optimum gaseous film coolant injector configuration for which the effectiveness is maximum.     

Experimental study of water droplet boiling on hot, non-porous surfaces

In this paper, the results of a series of experimental tests on single- and multi-droplet boiling systems are presented and discussed. The main objectives of the present study are: a) to investigate experimentally the effect of the boiling onset on the evaporation rate of water droplets; b) to measure the evolution of the solid surface temperature during evaporation; c) to examine the possibility of improving spray cooling efficiencies. The behavior of small water droplets (from 10 to 50 μl) gently deposited on hot, non-porous surfaces is observed. The evaporation of multi-droplet arrays (50 and 100 μl) under the same conditions of the single-droplet tests is analyzed. In particular, the conditions which determine the onset of nucleate and film boiling are stressed out. In the experimental tests, the interaction of different materials with several multi-droplet systems is monitored by infrared thermography. The spray cooling efficiency is related to the solid temperature decrease as a function of the water mass flux. In the present study, the effect of varying the droplet volume and the mass flux is also analyzed and discussed. The results on the droplets evaporation time and on the solid surface transient temperature distribution are also compared with the data obtained by the same authors during the analysis of droplet evaporation in total absence of nucleate and film boiling. In order to analyze the different behavior of the evaporating droplet as a function of the solid surface thermal conductivity, evaporative transients on aluminum, stainless steel and macor (a glass-like, low-conductivity material) are considered. Received on 20 February 1998     

Modeling Turbulent Droplet Motion in Vaporizing Sprays

The present article is concerned with the influence of turbulent gas-velocity fluctuations on both droplet dispersion and droplet-gas slip velocity in the context of spray simulation. The role of turbulence in generating slip and thus enhancing interphase heat and mass transfer has so far received little attention and is investigated in this work. A model for turbulent gas-velocity fluctuations along droplet trajectories is presented and is first tuned to reproduce elementary dispersion phenomena. It is then shown to give good results for more general dispersion problems as well as for slip velocities. As a fundamental source of information and for the purpose of model validation and comparison, direct numerical simulation (DNS) of droplet motion in homogeneous isotropic steady turbulence (HIST) is used. Dispersion of “injected” droplets (i.e. droplets under the influence of drift due to high injection velocity) as well as slip velocities for linear and nonlinear droplet drag are studied, and reasonable agreement is found with the model. The distributions of the slip velocity are found to be very similar for linear and highly nonlinear drag law. The present model is also used to investigate the influence of turbulence on droplet penetration. Comparison is made with an eddy-interaction model (the KIVA-2 model), which reveals various weaknesses of this model, in particular the underprediction of average slip velocity. The influence of slip due to turbulence on vaporization is shown for a fuel spray injected into a premix gas-turbine combustor. The classical eddy-interaction model is seen to underestimate the rate of vaporization due to the underprediction of slip. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Effects of injection timing on performance and droplet characteristics of a sixteen-valve four cylinder engine

 The performance and droplet characteristics of a sixteen-valve, four cylinder engine operating with combustion in one cylinder have been measured with part load, a speed of 1200 rpm and a stoichiometric mixture of gasoline and air. The indicated mean-effective cylinder pressure was found to be constant with initiation of injection from 150° to 630° of crank angle after top-dead-centre of intake and with a 10% reduction between 30° and 60° which coincided with maxima in the covariance in pressure and in the emissions of unburned hydrocarbon. There was also a tendency for performance to decline with injection after 660°. Measurements with laser- and phase-Doppler velocimeters showed that the number of droplets entering the cylinder was much reduced with injection at crank angles corresponding to closed inlet valves due to evaporation, and that the few large droplets which emerged did not survive until top-dead-centre of compression. In contrast, some of the many droplets associated with injection with the valves open survived to the crank angle of ignition and it is likely that these led to an inhomogeneous charge with poorer flame-front propagation responsible for reduction in performance. Received: 19 February 1996/Accepted: 8 October 1996