Effects of isotropic and anisotropic turbulent structures over spray atomization in the near field

Abstract

Sprays and atomization processes are extremely diffused both in nature and in industrial applications. In this paper we analyze the influence of the nozzle turbulence on primary atomization, focusing on the resulting turbulent field and atomization patterns in the Near Field (NF). In order to do so, a Synthetic Boundary Condition (SBC) and a Mapped Boundary Condition (MBC), producing respectively isotropic and anisotropic turbulent fields, have been generated as inflow conditions for the spray Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS). We present a specific methodology to ensure consistency on turbulence intensity and integral lengthscale between the two inflows. The analysis performed on the turbulent field (using one-point statistics and spectrum analysis) reveals a significantly stronger turbulent field generated by the inflow boundary conditions with anisotropic structures. While the increased turbulence field generated in the MBC case results in a higher number of droplets generated, the probability functions of both cases are extremely similar, leading to the non-obvious conclusion that the atomization patterns are only slightly affected by the inflow condition. These considerations are supported by the analysis of droplet size distributions, radial distribution functions, axial and radial distributions, highlighting extremely similar behaviors between the MBC and the SBC cases. Finally, these analyses and their computations are presented in detail, underlining how this type of point-process characterization shows interesting potential in future studies on sprays.