Crater Depth after the Impact of Multiple Drops into Deep Pools

Abstract

Many studies have been devoted to single drop impacts onto liquid films and pools, while just a few are available about double drop or drop train impacts, despite the fact that the latter are more realistic situations. Thus, computational fluid dynamics with a volume-of-fluid approach was used here to simulate the impact of multiple drops into deep pools. The aim was to verify if multiple drop impacts significantly differ from single drops ones, and if the models available in the literature for the crater depth in the case of single impacts are reliable also for the multiple drop cases. After validation against experimental data for single and double drop impacts, simulations for four to 30 drops, with a diameter of 2.30 mm, impact velocities 1.0, 1.4, 1.8, and 2.2 m/s, and random initial positions in the domain were performed. The results showed that the time evolution of the crater depth for multiple impacts is similar to the single drop case during the inertial phase, while the following behavior is very different. Consequently, the available models for the maximum crater depth during single drop impacts can still predict the upper and lower bounds of the values of the crater depth during multiple drop impacts within 5% deviation.