INTERACTING, CONVECTING, VAPORIZING FUEL DROPLETS WITH VARIABLE PROPERTIES

Two vaporizing droplets moving in tandem are numerically investigated. The forced convection of the gas phase, the transient deceleration due to the drag force, the surface regression, the relative motion between the two droplets, the internal circulation, transient heating of the liquid phase, and variable properties are considered. The unsteady, axisymmetric description of the global flowfield, the behavior of the interacting droplets, and the transient variation of the droplet spacing are presented. The dependencies on initial droplet Reynolds number, initial droplet spacing, initial droplet size ratio, variable properties, transfer number are determined. The critical droplet size ratio dividing the region where droplets collide from the region where they separate is determined. Correlations for the drag coefficients, Nusselt and Sherwood numbers of the lead droplet and the downstream droplet are obtained.