Turbulent mixing in three-dimensional droplet arrays

The atomisation, evaporation and subsequent mixing of fuel from a liquid spray determines the effectiveness of the combustion processes in gas turbines and internal combustion engines. In the present paper, three-dimensional direct numerical simulations (DNS) of the evaporation of methanol droplets in hot environments are presented. The gas phase mixing is assessed by examining the scalar dissipation and the mixture fraction probability density function (PDF). Novel multi-conditional models are proposed that use mixture fraction and structural parameters as the conditioning variables for the scalar dissipation which is found to be well predicted in terms of magnitude and distribution. The beta-PDF description of the mixture fraction seems to capture well the global behaviour for a laminar environment and for time-averaged results in turbulent cases. A novel model for the mixture fraction PDF is also proposed based on the multi-conditional model for scalar dissipation and an accurate representation of the PDF is achieved. (C) 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.