Direct Numerical Simulation of Secondary Breakup of Liquid Drops

This article studies numerically a familiar important phenomenon in spray combustion which is deformation and breakup of liquid drops in gas flow. The SIMPLER method is used to solve the two-dimensional (2D) unsteady axisymmetric Navier-Stokes equations for both the drop and the ambient gas flow. The level set method is applied to capturing the liquid/gas interface. Through calculation are obtained four typical breakup modes—oscillation, bag breakup, sheet stripping breakup and shear breakup governed by four non-dimensional numbers which are gas Weber number (Weg), liquid Reynolds number (Rel), gas Reynolds number (Reg) and density ratio (γ). Their effects upon each mode are analyzed. The results indicate that among the four numbers, Weg is of the highest importance with Rel, Reg and γ following up. By widening the range of the density ratio up to 1000, the breakup mode is discovered to be so complicated that a new one called multimode breakup mode turns up. This mode contains the shearing breakup and piercing breakup, which successively happen. The calculation results agree well with what is observed from the experiments.