Modeling liquid jet breakup in high speed cross-flow with finite-conductivity evaporation

Numerical study of liquid atomization/spray process in a high speed cross-flow is described in this paper. Due to the strong aero-thermal dynamics/spray interaction, droplet evaporation process plays an important role even for non-chemical reacting cold-flow systems. Further to the development of the finite-conductivity spray evaporation model, an improved drag coefficient correlation which would capture the spray phenomenon more accurately specifically for application to high speed flow applications was also incorporated. Numerical results indicated that jet penetration increased rapidly in the vicinity of the injector exit and then gradually increased due to increase in the drag of the air stream. The predicted results were reasonably comparable to measured data and showed more accurate comparisons to that of the infinite-conductivity model. (C) 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.