Numerical investigation of the full-cone spray structure and characteristics provided by a jet-swirl atomizer

Abstract

Jet-swirl atomizers are one of the pressure-swirl atomizers that produce full-cone spray. Although many hollow-cone pressure-swirl sprays have been studied, characteristic investigation of pressure-swirl full-cone sprays are limited to a few experimental, analytical, and numerical works where each of them investigate some of the main spray parameters. The few existing numerical studies are limited to calculate the coefficient of discharge and spray cone angle. Current numerical study investigate a newly developed jet-swirl atomizer with pressure-swirl full-cone spray, which considers other important full-cone spray characteristics including Sauter mean diameter, D10, and spray tip penetration along with the spray structure. In this study, a full-cone spray based on a newly developed jet-swirl injector is numerically simulated and analyzed using sprayFoam solver in the OpenFOAM 4.1 software. The existing code of the solver is developed and its dictionary is modified. The C+ + Sauter mean diameter and D10 codes on the cross-sectional surface are developed and this feature is added to the sprayFoam solver. The pre-published experimental and current work numerical results were in good agreement. In the simulation process, blob sheet model is used for the spray primary breakup. Two models including Taylor analogy breakup and Reitz–Diwakar have been used for the secondary breakup of the developed jet-swirl atomizer. This work shows that the results of the Reitz–Diwakar model are close to that of the Taylor analogy breakup model. The time-varying results of Sauter mean diameter, D10, and spray tip penetration are found to be in good agreement in both models. The results show that the Reitz–Diwakar model is stabilized somewhat later than the Taylor analogy breakup model. The simulated spray structure shows that the density of droplets is higher in the spray center region and this density is gradually reduced through the radial direction. The results along the radius show that the diameter of the droplets becomes larger while moving away from the center of the spray.