Vaporization supression of aerodynamic drop breakup

Direct numerical simulation is used to investigate the vaporization of a freely moving liquid droplet in a uniform high-temperature gas stream. The geometric Volume-of-Fluid (VOF) method is used to track the sharp liquid-gas interface and The incompressible Navier-Stokes equations are solved in conjunction with a two-fluid model for the thermal energy advection and conduction, with an immersed Dirichlet boundary condition at the interface to implicitly account for the latent heat absorption. The open-source solver, Basilisk, is used to evaluate the model using adaptive quadtree/octree mesh for spatial discretization and that allows for adaptive mesh refinement of the region near the interface. A simulation is conducted of an acetone droplet at a moderate Weber number in which the drop deforms into a bag shape and experiences breakup. The rate of vaporization of the drop is then increased to study the influence of vaporization on the drop breakup behaviour. It is observed that by increasing the rate of vaporization, the breakup of the droplet is suppressed, making an otherwise unstable droplet stable.