Volumetric Displacement Effects of the Gaseous Phase on the Euler-Lagrange Prediction of Spray Atomization

Accurate prediction of spray atomization process using an Euler-Lagrange (EL) approach is challenging because of the high volume fraction of the liquid phase in dense regimes. This would in reality displace a remarkable portion of the gaseous phase which is commonly ignored in the standard EL approaches. In this work, to capture the volumetric displacement effects using an EL approach, the spatio-temporal changes in the volume fraction of the gaseous phase are taken into account. This leads to zero-Mach number, variable density equations that give rise to a source terms in both momentum and continuity equations. These are typically neglected in the standard EL spray simulations. In this work, the effect of these source terms is quantified on a spray atomization process where the volume fraction of the injecting blob is 52%. A deterministic secondary breakup model together with the standard point-particle forces are coupled with LES of the carrier phase to model the atomization. Spray characteristics are evaluated with and without the volume displacement effects to identify regimes where such effects become important.