Evaluation of the Effect of Droplet Collisions on Spray Mixing

Abstract

A spray model, implemented in a three-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code has been used to evaluate the effect of droplet collisions on spray mixing resulting from the overlapping of liquid spray cones produced by two parallel hollow-cone nozzles under the influence of a cross-flow. The computations are compared with experimental results from phase Doppler anemometer (PDA) measurements in mixing steady sprays. The results show that the droplet collisions, which mainly occur in the mixing area of the two different sprays, have great influence on the droplet size and, as a consequence, on the predicted droplet velocities, especially at distances far from the spray nozzles. Information about the collision mechanisms as well as about droplet velocities and droplet dispersion due to collisions is also presented.