Mechanistic Model for Atomization of Superheated Liquid Jet Fuel

As air-breathing combustion applications advance, increased use of fuel for cooling, combined with cycle advancements, leads to a situation where the fuel can become superheated. While this can lead to potential benefit in terms of the eventual fuel injection process, with enhanced atomization and evaporation, it creates a significant challenge relative to any computational design tools that might be used in these systems. Dealing with the superheat behavior in the injection of a liquid fuel requires substantially more physical phenomena to be accounted for compared to a subcooled system. As a result, detailed data and models for this behavior as encountered in practical fuels are needed in order to validate and evolve the models needed. In the work proposed, emphasis will be given to the injection of a plain liquid jet under superheated conditions. In Phase I the behavior of the liquid internal to the injector will be addressed, with both models and experiments carried out. The models evolved will be incorporated into an existing simulation environment developed by ERC for atomization of liquid jets. In addition, data will be available for CFD validation.