Numerical study of drop spread and rebound on heated surfaces with consideration of high pressure

Abstract

The impact of a drop on a solid surface has been studied for many years. However, most of the previous numerical simulations were focused on the drop impact on a surface at room temperature and standard atmospheric pressure. This paper presents a numerical study of n-heptane and n-decane drops impacting solid surfaces with the consideration of high temperature and high pressure using smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH). The SPH method is validated against experiments from our work and literature. This work is focused on two typical drop-impact regimes, namely, spread and rebound. Different drop impact sequences were simulated at the wall temperature in the range of 27–400 °C and the ambient pressure between 1–20 bars. The difference between the inception of film boiling and liquid saturation temperature was found to decrease with elevating ambient pressure. The spread factor and apex height are investigated for the regime of spread. The results indicate that the lower viscosity fluid has a smaller spread factor as compared to the fluid with higher viscosity. The variation of Leidenfrost temperature with ambient pressure for both n-heptane and n-decane droplets is established numerically and compared with the trend observed in the experiment. The simulation outcomes of drop rebound for high boiling point liquid (n-decane) in the film boiling regime at atmospheric pressure show that with the increasing wall temperature, the drop rebound height and vapor layer height increase. Finally, the effect of ambient pressure on drop rebound height and velocity is investigated. The numerical results indicate that the increase in ambient pressure reduces the droplet rebound velocity and rebound height.