NUMERICAL INVESTIGATION OF THE EFFECTS OF DROPLET NUMBER AND HORIZONTAL DISTANCE ON MAXIMUM SPREADING AREA AND HEAT TRANSFER PERFORMANCE

The phenomenon of droplets impact on a solid surface can be seen in many industrial applications. This phenomenon becomes more complex when droplets interact with a hot surface and/or other droplets. After multiple droplet impingement on a solid surface, an interaction occurs depending on the impact conditions of the droplets and the distance between them. This interaction leads to an uprising layer which causes lesser spreading area per droplet on solid surface. The hydrodynamic outputs and heat transfer activities of the droplets are very distinct from single droplet cases due to this interaction. Difficulties in understanding and modeling the physical mechanisms that take place in the spray cooling phenomenon arise from the randomness and untraceable behavior of the droplets. Therefore, the complex structure has been simplified and the interactions of multiple droplets have been numerically investigated using the volume of fluid (VOF) method. The aim of this study is to examine the effect of droplet number and droplet impact conditions on the heat transfer performance from the surface.