Evaluation of the Performance of the Drag Force Model in Predicting Droplet Evaporation for R134a Single Droplet and Spray Characteristics for R134a Flashing Spray

Zhi-Fu Zhou, Dong-Qing Zhu, Guan-Yu Lu, Bin Chen, Wei-Tao Wu and Yu-Bai Li
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Zhi-Fu Zhou: State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Dong-Qing Zhu: State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Guan-Yu Lu: State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Bin Chen: State Key Laboratory of Multiphase Flow in Power Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University, Xi’an 710049, China
Wei-Tao Wu: School of Mechanical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology, Nanjing 210094, China
Yu-Bai Li: Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA

Energies, 2019, vol. 12, issue 24, 1-17

Abstract: Drag force plays an important role in determining the momentum, heat and mass transfer of droplets in a flashing spray. This paper conducts a comparative study to examine the performance of drag force models in predicting the evolution of droplet evaporation for R134a single droplet and spray characteristics for its flashing spray. The study starts from single moving R134a droplet vaporizing in atomispheric environment, to a fully turbulent, flashing spray caused by an accidental release of high-pressure R134a liquid in the form of a straight-tube nozzle, using in-house developed code and a modified sprayFoam solver in OpenFOAM, respectively. The effect of the nozzle diameter on the spray characteristics of R134a two-phase flashing spray is also examined. The results indicate that most of the drag force models have little effect on droplet evporation in both single isolated droplet modelling and fully two-phase flashing spray simulation. However, the Khan–Richardson model contributes to different results. In particular, it predicts a much different profile of the droplet diameter distribution and a much lower droplet temperature in the radial distance. The nozzle diameter has a significant impact on the flashing spray. A smaller diameter nozzle leads to more internse explosive atomization, shorter penetration distance, lower droplet diameter and velocity, and a faster temperature decrease.

Keywords: flashing spray; droplet; evaporation; drag force model; OpenFOAM; R134a (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Q Q0 Q4 Q40 Q41 Q42 Q43 Q47 Q48 Q49 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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