CFD analysis of spray propagation and evaporation including wall film formation and spray/film interactions

Abstract

Addressing the numerical simulation of complex two-phase flows in gas turbine combustors, this study features a comprehensive approach to the coupled solution of the interacting flow fields of the gas phase, evaporating fuel spray and evaporating, shear-driven fuel wall film. The gas flow and wall-film flow are described in Eulerian coordinates and are both calculated in the same computational unit. A second, separate program is based on Lagrangian particle tracking to model spray dispersion and evaporation. To account for interaction effects, an iterative procedure is applied considering mutual mass, momentum and energy transfer between the three flow regimes. For a realistic modeling of spray/wall and spray/film interaction, the droplet-trajectory computation comprises a set of droplet-impact models covering a broad range of impact conditions. The results of a two-phase flow simulation in a schematic LPP combustor premix duct demonstrate the effects of phase interaction as well as spray/wall and spray/film interaction.