Multiphase flow of miscible liquids: jets and drops

Drops and jets of liquids that are miscible with the surrounding bulk liquid are present in many processes from cleaning surfaces with the aid of liquid soaps to the creation of biocompatible implants for drug delivery. Although the interactions of immiscible drops and jets show similarities to miscible systems, the small, transient interfacial tension associated with miscible systems create distinct outcomes such as intricate droplet shapes and breakup resistant jets. Experiments have been conducted to understand several basic multiphase flow problems involving miscible liquids. Using high-speed imaging of the morphological evolution of the flows, we have been able to show that these processes are controlled by interfacial tensions. Further multiphase flows include investigating miscible jets, which allow the creation of fibers from inelastic materials that are otherwise difficult to process due to capillary breakup. This work shows that stabilization from the diminishing interfacial tensions of the miscible jets allows various elongated morphologies to be formed.     

A multiphysics model for charged liquid droplet breakup in electric fields

A computational multiphysics model for simulating the formation and breakup of droplets from axisymmetric charged liquid jets in electric fields is developed. A fully-coupled approach is used to combine two-phase flow, electrostatics, and transport of charged species via diffusion, convection, and migration. A conservative level-set method is shown to be robust and efficient for interface tracking. Parametric simulations are performed across a range of fluid properties corresponding to commonly used liquids in inkjet printing and spray applications to examine their role in jet evolution and droplet formation. Specifically, the effects of electric potential drop, surface tension, viscosity, and mobility are investigated. Droplet velocity and size distributions are calculated, and the corresponding mean values are found to increase and decrease respectively with increasing electric field strength. The variations in droplet velocity and size are quantified, and droplet size and charge levels agree well with experimental values. Increasing mobility of charged species is found to enhance jet velocity and accelerate droplet formation by shifting charge from the liquid interior to the interface.     

Simulation of the primary breakup of a high-viscosity liquid jet by a coaxial annular gas flow

The conversion of low-grade fossil and biogenic energy resources (petcoke, biomass) to a synthesis gas in a high pressure entrained flow gasification process opens a wide spectrum for high efficient energy conversion processes. The synthesis gas can be used for production of methane (SNG), liquid fuels (BtL, CtL) or as fuel for operation of a gas turbine in a combined cycle power plant (IGCC). The production of a tar free high quality syngas is a challenging objective especially due to the fact that typical liquid or suspension fuels for entrained flow gasifiers feature viscosities up to 1000 mPas. Fuel droplet conversion at typical entrained flow gasification conditions is characterized by heat up, evaporation and subsequent degradation of the vapour phase. To guarantee a high fuel conversion rate in the gasifier an efficient atomization of the fuel is required. Mainly twin-fluid burner nozzles are used for atomization of those typically high viscous fuels. The present study is focused on the assessment of the accuracy of CFD computations for the primary breakup of high-viscosity liquids using an external mixing twin fluid nozzle. In a first step experiments were performed with a Newtonian glycerol-water-mixture featuring a liquid viscosity of 400 mPas. Jet breakup was investigated using a high speed camera as well as PIV and LDA-System for a detailed investigation of the flow field. In a second step the experimental results serve as reference data to assess the accuracy of CFD computations. Compressible large eddy simulations (LES) were performed to capture the morphology of the primary breakup as well as the important flow field characteristics. A Volume of Fluid (VOF) approach was used to track the unsteady evolution and breakup of the liquid jet. Comparison of experimental and numerical results showed good agreement with respect to breakup frequency, velocity fields and morphology.     

Technique for extensional rheology characterization of highly reactive viscoelastic liquids

This paper reports the elaboration and validation of a new technique for extensional rheological characterization of highly reactive viscous liquids contained in a transparent reaction bulb where considered liquids have been prepared. For measurements, a rod was pulled down to contact with a surface of the liquid and then instantly raised up resulting in formation of a liquid thread. During the test, the studied fluid is in an equilibrium state with an inherent vapor. The elasto-capillary self-thinning and ultimate breakup of threads was registered by a high-speed camera. From the fluid dynamics point of view, the main distinguishing feature of the proposed method from the standard capillary breakup extensional rheometer (CaBER) method is the presence of unlimited amount of a test liquid under the endplate of a moving rod. In the present work, the presumable effect of this distinguishing factor on the final test data was estimated. In the frame of this research, the simulations of Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluids were conducted for the tests performed with the newly elaborated and CaBER-like configurations of devices. The test and computed data show some difference in the results obtained only at low values of Hencky strain (at the initial period of thread evolution). Increase in Hencky strain leads to a good agreement between results obtained with the help of CaBER-like devices as well as the proposed one.     

Dynamics of the capillary breakup of a bridge in an elastic fluid

The tension of self-thinning filaments occurring upon the capillary breakup of liquid bridges in viscoelastic fluids is measured. The solution of high-molecular polymers with the concentration of 0.1 to 1% are studied. The stresses occurring in the filaments are determined and the effect of the hydrodynamic interaction between the filaments and the adjoining macroscopic volume (droplet) is evaluated. A theoretical analysis of the fluid inflow into the droplet shows that in the case of filament extension the rheology of the polymer liquids under consideration is different from that under the singleaxis compression in droplet flow.     

Dynamics and Breakup of Pulse Microjets of Polymeric Liquids

The possibilities of controlling the dynamics and breakup of pulsed low-viscosity liquid microjets by means of small amounts of polymeric additives are considered. Significant differences between the breakup of pulse jets of Newtonian and viscoelastic polymeric liquids are recorded by means of high-speed photography. In flight a standard Newtonian fluid jet fragments into many secondary droplets. Depending on the molecular parameters, for a polymeric liquid three variants of the behavior of the jet in flight are possible: (1) the jet tail fragments into several secondary droplets; (2) the entire tail flows into the leading drop without loss and a single drop is formed; (3) the drop ejected from the nozzle returns to the nozzle under the action of elastic internal stresses in the tail. Criteria for the transition from one regime of jet motion to another are proposed.__________Translated from Izvestiya Rossiiskoi Academii Nauk, Mekhanika Zhidkosti i Gaza, No. 3, 2005, pp. 45–63.Original Russian Text Copyright © 2005 by Bazilevskii, Meyer, and Rozhkov.     

Breakup of extending liquid threads

A theoretical and experimental study is made of the stability and breakup of an extending viscous liquid cylindrical thread suspended in an immiscible viscous liquid undergoing extensional flow.It is shown that disturbances initiated as the thread is formed will in general as time proceeds be damped, then amplified and finally damped again. By considering disturbances being continually given to the system it is thus found that a disturbance which dominates at one moment will be completely different from that at any other. Assuming that breakup occurs when the disturbance amplitude becomes equal to cylinder radius, results are obtained for the time to breakup and for the final drop size resulting from breakup in terms of fluid properties, extension rate and the amplitude of disturbance given to system.These results were confirmed by examining, with the aid of cinematography, the breakup of a liquid thread in hyperbolic flow.     

Numerical investigation of turbulent-jet primary breakup using one-dimensional turbulence

Primary breakup to form droplets at liquid surfaces is an important fundamental process to study as it determines the initial properties of the dispersed phase, which affect mixing rates, secondary breakup, droplet collisions, and flow separation within the dispersed flow region. Primary breakup can be regarded as one of the least developed model components for simulating and predicting liquid jet breakup. However, it is of paramount importance in many technical applications, e.g. fuel injection in engines and spray painting. This paper presents a numerical investigation of primary breakup of a turbulent liquid jet in still air at standard conditions using the one-dimensional turbulence (ODT) modeling framework. ODT is a stochastic model that simulates turbulent flow evolution along a notional 1D line of sight by applying instantaneous maps to represent the effect of individual turbulent eddies on property profiles. An important feature of ODT is the resolution of all relevant scales, both temporal and spatial. The restriction to one spatial dimension in ODT permits affordable high resolution of interfacial and single-phase property gradients, which is key to capturing the local behavior of the breakup process and allows simulations at high Reynolds and Weber numbers that are currently not accessible to direct numerical simulations (DNS).This paper summarizes our extensions of the ODT model to simulate geometrically simple jet breakup problems, including representations of Rayleigh wave breakup, turbulent breakup, and shear-driven breakup. Each jet breakup simulation consists of a short temporal channel section to initialize a turbulent velocity profile at the nozzle exit followed by an adjacent jet section. The simulations are carried out for jet exit Reynolds number of 11,500, 23,000, 46,000 and 92,000 while the Weber number is varied within the range 10²–10⁷. We present results on breakup statistics including spatial locations of droplet release, droplet sizes and liquid core length. The results on primary breakup are compared to experimental results and models.     

Dynamics of formation and dripping of drops of deformation-rate-thinning and -thickening liquids from capillary tubes

Dynamics of formation of drops of non-Newtonian liquids from capillary tubes is studied computationally. The rheology of the drop liquids is described by a constitutive relation that accounts for both deformation-rate-thinning and -thickening. The analysis is expedited by reducing the original system of three-dimensional but axisymmetric equations to a system of one-dimensional slender-jet equations. The slender-jet equations are solved by a method of lines using a finite element method for spatial discretization and an adaptive finite difference method for time integration. The simulations follow the formation in time of thousands of drops in sequence, including any satellites that may be produced upon the breakup of a thin thread connecting an about-to-form primary drop to the rest of the liquid attached to the tube. Rate-thickening is shown to produce bead-on-string patterns, which are typically attributed to viscoelastic effects, along the thin threads as they near pinch-off. Rate-thinning, on the other hand, is demonstrated to reduce the length of such thin threads. Simulations are used to identify conditions that may lead to minimization and/or elimination of unwanted satellites. Analysis of dripping or leaky faucets of non-Newtonian liquids reveals rich nonlinear dynamical behavior. As with Newtonian liquids, simple periodic or P-1, where P stands for period, dripping at low flow rates gives way to more complex responses as flow rate is increased. In addition to P-1, P-2, and P-4 responses seen in recent computational analyses of dripping faucets of Newtonian liquids, the new non-Newtonian simulations have also uncovered difficult-to-find P-3 responses as well as chaotic states. Rate-thinning and low viscosities are shown to enhance the complexity of observed responses. Rate-thickening, on the other hand, lowers the critical value of the flow rate for the onset of complexity but narrows the range of flow rates over which the dynamics is complex. The possibility of hysteresis is demonstrated and the effect of fluid rheology on the value of the flow rate for transition from dripping to jetting is determined.     

Modeling of aerated stirred tanks with shear-thinning power law liquids

Detailed simulations of aerated stirred tanks with shear-thinning power law liquids are presented. The lattice-Boltzmann scheme was used to discretize the filtered conservation equations of the liquid phase. The motion of bubbles was tracked based on the Euler–Lagrange approach with a bubble cluster concept. The collision, breakup and coalescence of bubbles were modeled as stochastic events. The predicted flow field of a single-phase stirred tank with shear-thinning power law liquid shows reasonable agreement with experimental data. For aerated systems, qualitatively similar gas holdup distribution was achieved when comparing the predicted result with experiments. Using the proposed modeling approach, it was found that a change in rheology alters the number mean diameter, Sauter diameter and the shape of bubble size distribution.     

Investigation of bubble breakup and coalescence in a packed-bed reactor – Part 2: Development of a new bubble breakup and coalescence model

A mechanistic model of bubble breakup and coalescence has been developed for a packed bed. Bubble breakup and coalescence models are developed for two coalescence and three breakup mechanisms by taking account of geometry effects and local flow conditions. The bubble size distribution estimated with the present bubble breakup and coalescence models are compared with the experimental data. Change of bubble size distributions along the axial direction is studied with the median bubble size. Median bubble size as a function of the axial location is estimated under two inlet flow conditions: (1) bubble breakup dominated flow and (2) bubble coalescence dominated flow. The predictions of the median bubble size with the present model result in the best among other existing bubble breakup and coalescence models. However, the prediction of the median bubble size for the bubble coalescence dominated flow is still significantly larger than the experimental data. Breakup and coalescence coefficients need to be adjusted in order to predict more accurate bubble size distributions and median bubble size for both flow conditions. For the bubble breakup dominated flow, the breakup and coalescence coefficients are found to be 0.35 and 0.4, respectively. For the bubble coalescence dominated flow, the breakup and coalescence coefficients are found to be 0.35 and 0.01, respectively.     

Bubble size distribution prediction for large-scale ship flows: Model evaluation and numerical issues

Prediction of the bubble size distribution in the wake of a ship is important to analyze its acoustic signature. To achieve CFD simulation of dynamic ships with moving control surfaces and rotating propellers in waves, a robust implementation is paramount. In this work a mass conserving multigroup discretization strategy of the Boltzmann transport equation for polydispersed bubbly flows is presented, as well as an analysis of available breakup and coalescence models. Modifications of the discrete equations for the fixed pivot method at the boundaries are introduced that guarantee exact bubble mass conservation. The role of the time stepping scheme in the conservation of mass and number of bubbles is discussed. Though the conservation properties of the discrete system of equations are satisfied provided they are solved exactly, in practice an iterative procedure must be used since the ODE’s are non-linear. Three iterative schemes are proposed and they are analyzed in terms of robustness and efficiency. Breakup, coalescence and dissolution models are analyzed from the numerical point of view. Available models of breakup and coalescence are studied finding appropriate choices for ship applications. Other models are appropriate as well, but are more costly numerically. As appropriate for ship applications, an extension to the model of Prince and Blanch for salt water is proposed and analyzed. The final model is tested against experimental data and computations by other researchers, and convergence properties in bubble size discretization is studied. It is found that for salt water the final steady state is dependent on the initial condition since there is a range of sizes for which coalescence and breakup are both negligible.     

Bubbly jets in stagnant water

Air–water bubbly jets are studied experimentally in a relatively large water tank with a gas volume fraction, C_o, of up to 80% and nozzle Reynolds number, Re, ranging from 3500 to 17,700. Measurements of bubble properties and mean axial water velocity are obtained and two groups of experiments are identified, one with relatively uniform bubble sizes and another with large and irregular bubbles. For the first group, dimensionless relationships are obtained to describe bubble properties and mean liquid flow structure as functions of C_o and Re. Measurements of bubble slip velocity and estimates of the drag coefficient are also provided and compared to those for isolated bubbles from the literature. The study confirms the importance of bubble interactions to the dynamics of bubbly flows. Bubble breakup processes are also investigated for bubbly jets. It was found that a nozzle Reynolds number larger than 8000 is needed to cause breakup of larger bubbles into smaller bubbles and to produce a more uniform bubble size distribution. Moreover, the Weber number based on the mean water velocity appears to be a better criteria than the Weber number based on the bubble slip velocity to describe the onset of bubble breakup away from the nozzle, which occurs at a Weber number larger than 25.     

新型苯并三氮唑功能化离子液体的缓蚀与摩擦学行为研究

合成了3种新型苯并三氮唑(BTA)阳离子功能化的离子液体，首先将3种离子液体作为0.5 M H₂SO₄溶液的缓蚀剂，利用电化学测试方法考察了对铜锡合金的缓蚀性能，电化学阻抗谱图和动电位极化曲线测试结果表明:3种离子液体均能够有效地抑制0.5 M H₂SO₄溶液对铜锡合金的腐蚀，起到较好的缓蚀效果. 考察了3种离子液体作为聚乙二醇(PEG)基础油添加剂时的摩擦学性能，结果表明:3种离子液体能够显著降低基础油的摩擦系数和磨损量，表现出较好的减摩抗磨性能. 利用SEM-EDS和XPS对磨斑进行了分析表征，发现摩擦化学产物和离子液体吸附膜构成的边界润滑膜是产生减摩抗磨效果的主要原因. 这种新型BTA阳离子功能化离子液体是一种兼具抗腐蚀性和优异摩擦学性能的多功能材料，在工业上具有非常广阔的应用前景.      

Filament-breaking length—a measure of elasticity in extension

A technique has been developed to assess elasticity in extension of fluids which are weakly elastic. The technique is based on stretching a fluid sample held between two small closely spaced co-axial disks until the fluid bridge or filament breaks. The distance between the disks on breakup, ‘the breaking length’, is measured. When the fluid is elastic, this length is greater than that of an equivalent inelastic fluid. An inelastic baseline was established by measuring the breaking lengths of a wide variety of Newtonian fluids. Measurements with weakly elastic fluids reveal that the extra breaking length increases with polymer type and concentration and with the rate of stretching, the expected behavior for elastic liquids. The breaking lengths of model paper coatings were measured and found to correlate with the degree of misting in a roll coating machine, indicating that droplet formation is related to extensional elasticity.     

Thermal modulation and breakup of liquid jets

In this paper, we study the breakup behavior of Newtonian liquid and non‐Newtonian liquid jets with an arbitrary variation surface tension imposed along its length. The effect of duty cycle, fluid properties, and the various profiles of the surface tension is investigated. It is shown that the breakup behavior of a jet can be constructed by using the Fourier expansion of the surface tension profile. When the dimensionless wavenumber k is larger than 0.5, the jet breakup behavior is determined by the lowest frequency of the Fourier series expansion of the surface tension profile. As k decreases, higher frequency Fourier modes come to play. In general, for k between, 1∕(n+ 1) and 1∕n,n Fourier modes are needed to determine the jet breakup behavior. The current nonlinear model differs from the existing linear slender jet model in the literature in several ways. While the principle of superposition is valid for the linear model, it is not generally valid for the current nonlinear model. For the linear model, the jet will never break up when the wavenumber is larger than 1. The current model, however, shows clearly that the jet can indeed break up when the wavenumber is larger than 1. Furthermore, the current nonlinear model predicts a breakup time substantially higher than that from the linear model.Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Regimes of spray formation in gas-centered swirl coaxial atomizers

Spray formation in ambient atmosphere from gas-centered swirl coaxial atomizers is described by carrying out experiments in a spray test facility. The atomizer discharges a circular air jet and an axisymmetric swirling water sheet from its coaxially arranged inner and outer orifices. A high-speed digital imaging system along with a backlight illumination arrangement is employed to record the details of liquid sheet breakup and spray development. Spray regimes exhibiting different sheet breakup mechanisms are identified and their characteristic features presented. The identified spray regimes are wave-assisted sheet breakup, perforated sheet breakup, segmented sheet breakup, and pulsation spray regime. In the regime of wave-assisted sheet breakup, the sheet breakup shows features similar to the breakup of two-dimensional planar air-blasted liquid sheets. At high air-to-liquid momentum ratios, the interaction process between the axisymmetric swirling liquid sheet and the circular air jet develops spray processes which are more specific to the atomizer studied here. The spray exhibits a periodic ejection of liquid masses whose features are dominantly controlled by the central air jet.     

The significance of drop non-sphericity in sprays

This paper presents a new framework to model drop dynamics in Lagrangian sprays. The framework builds on the Taylor Analogy Breakup (TAB) model. Real-fluid (gas-liquid) thermodynamics applicable to multicomponent systems are combined with Gradient Theory to facilitate detailed calculations of drop surface tension forces, oscillations, and breakup processes. This is combined with a more detailed treatment of deforming drop dynamics to construct more accurate representations of the local interfacial exchanges of mass, momentum, and energy. The framework is derived using an energy balance equation that explicitly enforces drop momentum conservation during the breakup process. This facilitates development of a refined set of drop equations that address current shortcomings in the prediction of drop properties over a wide range of relevant breakup conditions. The resulting drag forces, evaporation, and heating rates deviate significantly from the predictions given by contemporary drop models used in modern simulations. These deviations are quantified using Large Eddy Simulation (LES) with a Lagrangian-Eulerian modeling approach. The analysis demonstrates how the model improvements in the new framework provides a more detailed representation of physical complexities that are largely neglected in modern studies.     

Large eddy simulation of droplet dispersion for inhomogeneous turbulent wall flow

A large eddy simulation (LES) coupled with a Lagrangian stochastic model has been applied to the study of droplet dispersion in a turbulent boundary layer. Droplets are tracked in a Lagrangian way. The velocity of the fluid particle along the droplet trajectory is considered to have a large-scale part and a small-scale part given by a modified three-dimensional Langevin model using the filtered subgrid scale (SGS) statistics. An appropriate Lagrangian correlation timescale is considered in order to include the influences of gravity and inertia. Two-way coupling is also taken into account. The inter-droplet collision has been introduced as the main mechanism of secondary breakup. A stochastic model for breakup has been generalized for coalescence simulation, thereby two phenomena, coalescence and breakup are simulated in the framework of a single stochastic model. The parameters of this model, selectively for coalescence and for breakup, are computed dynamically by relating them to the local resolved properties of the dispersed phase compared to the main fluid. The model is validated by comparison with an agglomeration model and with experimental results on secondary breakup. The LES coupled with Lagrangian particle tracking and the model for droplet coalescence and breakup is applied to the study of the atmospheric dispersion of wet cooling tower plumes. The simulations are done for different droplet size distributions and volume fractions. We focused on the influence of these parameters on mean concentration, concentration variance and mass flux profiles.