Detailed Analysis of Liquid Ligament Breakup

Multiphase flows are relevant to various industrial processes and are also a ubiquitous feature of nature. Atomization is a Gas-Liquid class of multiphase flow in which the liquid bulk disintegrates into a spectrum of drops. The final drop size distribution of fragmenting liquids is important and is crucial to quantifying the performance of atomizers. This thesis implements two models of ligament breakup. The first model provides a method to determine the droplet size distribution of fragmenting ligaments. The second model provides a relation between ligament stretching, aspect ratio and dimensionless properties like Ohnesorge and Weber numbers for ligaments being stretched by aerodynamic force. The first model by Villermaux et.al considers a ligament as a linear succession of liquid blobs which undergo continuous interplay during destabilization. The evolution of their size distribution ultimately rules the droplet size distribution which follow a gamma distribution [14]. The results show that the Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) of ligaments with different perturbations fragmented into very few drops and cannot be used to confirm that they follow the predicted gamma distribution. The second model considers a ligament breakup due to Rayleigh-Plateau Instability and provides an equation for ligament stretching. Through test runs the proportionality constant in the equation is determined by a least square fit. The theoretical number of drops is compared with the number of drops resulting from the Direct Numerical Simulation of ligament with a sinusoidal perturbation. It is found that the wavelength of the initial perturbation does not determine the number of drops obtained by ligament breakup