A Study on Accounting for Drift Velocities on Liquid Jets Injected in Cross Flow

Abstract The efficiency and combustion performance of propulsion systems, like internal combustion (IC) engines and gas turbines, is known to be related to the performance of the fuel and air mixing process. Operating conditions and fuels are rapidly changing, therefore new CFD models which accurately accounts for all physical aspects, still maintaining a simple framework, are extremely important. In this work we consider the drift velocity contribution, which often is overlooked or neglected, defined as the velocity of the dispersed phase relative to the mixture volumetric mean velocity in a single fluid formulation, a key variable in two-phase mixture model. Water test cases are here considered for the study. The present work investigates the structure and the droplet velocity field of a plain liquid jet injected into a high-pressure air crossflow. Because of the large scale separation between the small features of the interface and the overall jet we use the diffuse-interface treatment in a single-fluid Eulerian framework. A Σ- Y family model is implemented in the OpenFOAM framework which includes liquid diffusion due to drift-flux velocities and a new formulation of the spray atomization. The main objective is to explore the droplet velocity distribution and the jet structure with and without considering the drift flux correction and compare the related results with the experimental data.