Study on Droplet Size and Velocity Distributions of a Pressure Swirl Atomizer Based on the Maximum Entropy Formalism

Kai Yan,Zhi Ning,Ming Lü,Chunhua Sun

doi:10.3390/e17020580

Abstract

A predictive model for droplet size and velocity distributions of a pressure swirl atomizer has been proposed based on the maximum entropy formalism (MEF). The constraint conditions of the MEF model include the conservation laws of mass, momentum, and energy. The effects of liquid swirling strength, Weber number, gas-to-liquid axial velocity ratio and gas-to-liquid density ratio on the droplet size and velocity distributions of a pressure swirl atomizer are investigated. Results show that model based on maximum entropy formalism works well to predict droplet size and velocity distributions under different spray conditions. Liquid swirling strength, Weber number, gas-to-liquid axial velocity ratio and gas-to-liquid density ratio have different effects on droplet size and velocity distributions of a pressure swirl atomizer.

Highlights

The liquid fuel injection process plays an important role in combustion performance, so the distributions of droplet size and velocity in sprays are crucial parameters needed for fundamentalEntropy 2015, 17 analysis of practical spray systems
The comparisons show that the model based on maximum entropy formalism can predict droplet size and velocity distributions well for a pressure swirl atomizer
A predictive model for droplet size and velocity distributions of a pressure swirl atomizer has been proposed based on the maximum entropy formalism (MEF)

Summary

Introduction

The liquid fuel injection process plays an important role in combustion performance, so the distributions of droplet size and velocity in sprays are crucial parameters needed for fundamentalEntropy 2015, 17 analysis of practical spray systems. The liquid fuel injection process plays an important role in combustion performance, so the distributions of droplet size and velocity in sprays are crucial parameters needed for fundamental. Some spray applications require narrow size distributions, while some need wide ones. Other spray processes require very a few small drops or very few large ones [1]. Droplet size and velocity distributions are typically described using one of the following four methods: empirical, maximum entropy formalism (MEF), discrete probability function method, or stochastic method [2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9]. Due to its powerful prediction ability, the MEF has been used in many researches to study the size and velocity distribution characteristics in all kinds of spray systems [10,11,12,13,14,15]

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Results

Conclusion