The dispersion of polydisperse non-spherical droplets in a spray jet

The atomization and dispersion of droplets are critical in the study of gas turbine engine combustion in aviation and power generation industries. In this study, we will focus on droplet dispersion from a spray jet, as it is one of the factors that influences the formation of spray. In modeling droplets in the spray, the most popular strategy is to use Lagrangian particle tracking (LPT) method to represent the spray as a discrete collection of spherical particles. However, the high temperature and pressure conditions within a combustor often lead to significant droplet deformation, resulting in an altered droplet dynamics. Our previous research have highlighted the significant impact of droplet deformation on vaporization, combustion and drag coefficient, but these studies were limited to idealized scenarios, such as an isolated droplet in a shear flow. To advance our research towards more realistic engine combustion environment, we will employ an in-house code developed for direct numerical simulation of multiphase flow to simulate the dispersion of droplets generated from a spray jet injected into near-quiescent gas. We will explore a broad range of parameter space of droplets to demonstrate the necessity of incorporating non-sphericity into LPT models for accurate spray simulations in relevant industrial fields.