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Accurate analysis of multicomponent fuel spray evaporation in turbulent flow

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Abstract

The aim of this paper is to perform an accurate analysis of the evaporation of single component and binary mixture fuels sprays in a hot weakly turbulent pipe flow by means of experimental measurement and numerical simulation. This gives a deeper insight into the relationship between fuel composition and spray evaporation. The turbulence intensity in the test section is equal to 10%, and the integral length scale is three orders of magnitude larger than the droplet size while the turbulence microscale (Kolmogorov scales) is of same order as the droplet diameter. The spray produced by means of a calibrated droplet generator was injected in a gas flow electrically preheated. N-nonane, isopropanol, and their mixtures were used in the tests. The generalized scattering imaging technique was applied to simultaneously determine size, velocity, and spatial location of the droplets carried by the turbulent flow in the quartz tube. The spray evaporation was computed using a Lagrangian particle solver coupled to a gas-phase solver. Computations of spray mean diameter and droplet size distributions at different locations along the pipe compare very favorably with the measurement results. This combined research tool enabled further investigation concerning the influencing parameters upon the evaporation process such as the turbulence, droplet internal mixing, and liquid-phase thermophysical properties.

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Acknowledgments

The research was partially supported by the Italian Ministry of Economic Development within the framework of the Program Agreement MiSE-CNR “Ricerca di Sistema Elettrico.” The Juwi funding program of the German Aerospace Center is also greatly acknowledged. The Applied Physics group at Istituto Motori-CNR in Naples wishes to thank TSI Inc. Minnesota, USA, for having kindly provided the high-resolution PowerView Plus CCD and the Insight 3G® software package.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Institute of Combustion Technology, German Aerospace Center (DLR), Stuttgart, Germany

    Bastian Rauch, Patrick Le Clercq & Michael Rachner

  2. Istituto Motori, Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche (CNR), Naples, Italy

    Raffaela Calabria, Fabio Chiariello & Patrizio Massoli

Authors
  1. Bastian Rauch
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  2. Raffaela Calabria
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  3. Fabio Chiariello
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  4. Patrick Le Clercq
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  5. Patrizio Massoli
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  6. Michael Rachner
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Correspondence to Bastian Rauch.

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Rauch, B., Calabria, R., Chiariello, F. et al. Accurate analysis of multicomponent fuel spray evaporation in turbulent flow. Exp Fluids 52, 935–948 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00348-011-1169-0

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00348-011-1169-0

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