COUPLED ATOMIZATION AND SPRAY MODELLING IN THE SPRAY FORMING PROCESS USING OPENFOAM

The paper presents a numerical model capable of simulating the atomization, break-up and in-flight spray phenomena in the spray forming process. The model is developed and implemented in the freeware code openFOAM. The focus is on studying the coupling effect of the melt break-up phenomena with the local gas and droplets flow fields. The work is based on an Eulerian-Lagrangian description, which is implemented in a full 3D representation. The gas is described by the incompressible RANS equations, whereas the movement of the droplets is modeled by a tracking approach, together with a full thermal model for droplet cooling and solidification. The model is tested and validated against results from literature and experiments. Subsequently, the model is used to simulate the complex flow fields in the spray forming process and the results are discussed. The presented model of the spray forming process is able to predict the droplet size distribution of the spray from the process conditions, by introducing submodels for the melt fragmentation and successive secondary break-up processes as part of the spray model. Furthermore, the competition of drop break-up and solidification is derived by describing the thermal state of the particles in the spray. Therefore, the model includes a full thermal solver for the droplets, which also takes the rapid solidification of different drop sizes into account.