Computational Characterization of Aeroengine Combustor/Augmentor Fuel Injectors

Liquid fuel injected into combustors has to undergo atomization in order to increase the available fuel surface area for fast evaporation, mixing, and subsequent combustion. Experimental access to the atomization region in realistic fuel injectors is limited. Recent advances in numerical methods and available computational power have made it possible to study the atomization process by detailed numerical simulations. This addresses the shortcomings of the experiments. The break-up is simply part of the solution of the governing Navier-Stokes equations. Using full detailed simulations as an industrial design tool, is at least two decades away. An intermediate step is to introduce physical models for sub-processes of atomization. The approach we have been pursuing successfully , is not to resolve liquid spray droplets below a certain threshold, but instead to model them using well established Lagrangian point particle/parcel approaches. Using Cascade Technologies’ current computational tools, such simulations are viable today. They are still expensive for industrial applications intended. The goal of this proposal is to further reduce the overall computational cost of these simulations by an additional factor of 5. This would allow simulations of a realistic augmentor to be competed within 3 days by the end of 2010.