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Proceedings of the Combustion Institute 37 (2019) 3237–3244

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Experimental investigation of spray characteristics of a

liquid jet in a turbulent subsonic gaseous crossflow
Mohsen Broumand, Mahmoud M.A. Ahmed, Madjid Birouk∗
Department of Mechanical Engineering, University of Manitoba, Winnipeg, Manitoba, R3T 5V6 Canada

Received 30 November 2017; accepted 3 August 2018

Available online 23 August 2018

Abstract

Two perforated plates with different solidity ratios, S=50% and 67%, were used to investigate the effect of
the velocity fluctuations of a subsonic gaseous crossflow on the spray characteristics of a liquid jet includ-
ing droplet size and velocity distributions. The experiments were conducted over a range of jet-to-crossflow
momentum flux ratio of q=16.5-172, and two gas Weber numbers of Weg =2.7 and 5.9, corresponding to
the enhanced capillary breakup and bag breakup regimes, respectively. The experimental results of this study
revealed that the distribution of droplets size associated with a turbulent and a uniform crossflow for each
specific breakup regime were approximately identical. The bimodal and single peak distributions of droplets
size, respectively, associated with enhanced capillary and bag breakup regimes were generally consistent with
the literature reports. However, the transition of the liquid primary breakup regime from enhanced capillary
to bag breakup mode was delayed in a turbulent crossflow compared to its uniform counterpart. The gen-
eral behavior of droplets size-velocity profiles were also consistent with the literature reports. Nonetheless,
complex variations in the distribution of droplets velocity when changing the crossflow turbulence intensity
were observed and linked with the presence of instabilities on the liquid jet’s surface. Finally, the present
experiments allowed shedding more light on the reason why the breakup mechanisms of a liquid jet in a
conventional uniform crossflow should not be generalized to predict the distinct breakup process of a liquid
jet in a turbulent crossflow.
© 2018 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Liquid jet; Spray; Turbulent crossflow; Droplet size; Droplet velocity

1. Introduction crossflow is one of the most efficient spray genera-

To reduce harmful exhaust emissions of liquid-
fuel combustors, without sacrificing their overall
performance, an efficient fuel/oxidant mixing pro-
cess is required. Injection of a liquid jet in a gaseous
∗Corresponding author.
E-mail address: madjid.birouk@umanitoba.ca
(M. Birouk).
tion techniques when rapid mixing is desired [1,2].
Superior mixing properties of this flowfield makes
it attractive for power generation and aeronautic
propulsion systems, such as low NOx gas turbine,
high speed direct injection (HSDI) diesel engine,
and aircraft engine’s afterburner [3-6]. Many
studies examined the role of different parameters
including liquid properties, operating conditions
and nozzle geometry in describing spray character-
istics of a liquid jet injected into a uniform gaseous

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.proci.2018.08.004
1540-7489 © 2018 The Combustion Institute. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
3238 M. Broumand et al. / Proceedings of the Combustion Institute 37 (2019) 3237–3244
crossflow with negligible velocity fluctuations
(e.g., [1,7-13]). However, there exists no published
research on the effect of a turbulent gaseous cross-
flow’s characteristics, such as turbulence intensity,
on the breakup features of a liquid jet.
Among spray characteristics of a liquid jet in a
gaseous crossflow, the investigation of droplets’ size
and velocity distribution is of a great importance
as they establish the subsequent features of fuel-
oxidant mixing quality, such as droplets’ spatial
distribution, vaporization, mixing rate and conse-
quently the efficiency of liquid fuel combustion. In-
gebo [14] correlated drops mean size, described by
Sauter Mean Diameter (SMD or d32 ), with gas We-
ber number, W eg = ρgu2g d j /σ , gas Reynolds num-
ber, Reg = ρg ugd j /μg , and a pressure sensitive di-
mensionless group gl/c2 ; where g is the acceleration
due to gravity, l is the mean free molecular path, c
stands for root-mean-square molecular velocity, ρ g
and μg are gas density and viscosity, respectively,
ug is crossflow velocity, σ is liquid surface tension,
and dj is the jet diameter. Following this study, Less
and Schetz [15] included liquid jet velocity, vj , in
their proposed relation for predicting drops SMD.
Similarly, Tambe et al. [16] reported that surface
breakup intensifies with increasing jet-to-crossflow
momentum flux ratio, q = ρl v2j /ρg u2g (where ρ l is
liquid density), which results in smaller SMD.
Zheng and Marshall [17] studied the breakup
of a liquid jet at low-Weber-number crossflow,
4 < Weg < 16, and ascertained the influence of
Weg on drops size distribution. Becker and Hassa
[18] reported the absence of a strong correlation be-
tween droplets size and Weg at high pressure test
conditions extended from 1.5 to 15 bar. Farvardin
et al. [8] studied the effect of liquid viscosity on
droplets size downstream of a nozzle using differ-
ent blends of diesel and biodiesel. They noted that
although viscosity can affect the primary breakup
modes of a liquid jet, droplets size distribution
remained almost unchanged after the secondary
breakup in the far-field region. Taking into account
all of the aforementioned parameters, Song et al.
[19] developed a relation for predicting the mean
size of drops as a function of Weg , q, and liquid/gas
density and viscosity ratios to account for the sur-
roundings airflow pressure and liquid properties.
Droplets velocity downstream of a liquid jet in
a uniform gaseous crossflow is also known to be
a strong function of the gas mean velocity ug (or
Weg ) [20]. Size-velocity profiles generally show that
(e.g., [21]) the larger the droplets are, the slower
they move downstream in the crossflow streamwise
direction. This is confirmed by Eriksson et al.
[22] who reported that larger droplets exhibited
slower velocity. Elshamy et al. [23] attributed the
variation in the velocity distribution of droplets in
a high-Weber-number crossflow, Weg ≈ 100-500, to
two main factors; the change of Weg , and the size
of the wake region behind the liquid jet. They also
Fig. 1. Schematic view of the flow arrangement in the test
section.
stated that, at high-pressure test conditions of up to
7 bar, droplets follow the crossflow velocity within
a shorter distance compared to that at standard
pressure conditions. Lubarsky et al. [24] studied
droplets velocity at different Weg , and noted that
the absolute lag velocity between droplets and
the incoming crossflow’s mean velocity is directly
proportional to Weg . This observation is confirmed
by Mashayek et al. [21] who asserted that it takes
a longer distance for droplets to merge into a fast
gas stream.
All the above studies investigated the effect of
a uniform gaseous crossflow with negligible turbu-
lence on spray characteristics of a liquid jet. Over-
all, they revealed that ug (or Weg ) is the predomi-
nantly controlling parameter on droplets size and
velocity distribution. The present study, therefore,
aims to investigate the effect of a turbulent gaseous
crossflow on spray characteristics of a liquid jet.
2. Experimental details
2.1. Apparatus
The experimental facility used in this study con-
sisted mainly of an open wind tunnel, two perfo-
rated plates with different solidity ratio, and a liq-
uid injection system. The wind tunnel is designed to
generate a uniform subsonic airflow in a transpar-
ent test section made of acrylic, which has a square
cross-section of 305 mm × 305 mm and a length of
600 mm (Fig. 1).
The effect of three different crossflow condi-
tions on the spray characteristics of a liquid jet
is examined. One is without grid, and the other
two cases with a grid (i.e., straight-hole perfo-
rated plates [25,26]) with a different solidity ratio
(S ≡ solid area/total area) installed at the inlet of
the test section (Fig. 1). The case without grid
(WT) acts as a datum such that the breakup is
attributed only to the interaction between a uni-
form crossflow and a liquid jet. The first perforated
 M. Broumand et al. / Proceedings of the Combustion Institute 37 (2019) 3237–3244
plate (PS50) has a solidity ratio of S = 50% with
a nominal mesh spacing M = 16 mm, and the
second (PS67) has a solidity ratio of S=67% and a
mesh spacing M=20 mm. Both plates have circular
straight-holes with a nominal diameter of 12 mm
and a thickness of 6 mm.
Liquid jet was injected into the crossflow in the
test section using a tapered-edged nozzle, which has
a diameter of dj = 0.5 mm and a fixed length to di-
ameter ratio of L/dj = 4. This nozzle configuration
was chosen to prevent the promotion of turbulence
and cavitation of liquid flow inside the nozzle. This
allowed to isolate and study only the effect of cross-
flow velocity fluctuation on spray characteristics of
a liquid jet. The full characterization of the flow in
the nozzle was reported elsewhere [27]. The nozzle
exit was centered transversely through the test sec-
tion ceiling and placed 200 mm downstream of the
test section inlet to avoid the turbulence develop-
ing region just downstream of the grid. The nozzle
was inserted 24 mm into the crossflow in order to
avoid the effect of wall boundary layer on liquid jet
breakup.
2.2. Diagnostics
Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) was used to
measure the mean velocity and velocity fluctua-
tions of the gaseous crossflow. The PIV setup con-
sisted of a Nd:YAG laser with a pulse energy of
135 mJ and a repetition rate of 10 Hz, a double-
frame FlowSense EO 4 M CCD camera of 20.4 fps
at 2048 × 2048 pixels2 resolution. Olive oil drops
of about 1 μm were used as seeding particles of
the gaseous crossflow. The duration between pulses
was adjusted between 40 and 60 μs depending on
the selected crossflow velocity. Three thousand im-
age pairs were acquired using a field of view of
160 × 160 mm2 . Dantec Dynamic Studio Software
was used for images post processing and determin-
ing crossflow rms velocities. It was performed using
an interrogation area of 32 × 32 with 50% overlap
along with a range validation for eliminating spu-
rious vectors. In addition, an average filter of 3 × 3
vectors was used for flowfield smoothing. The un-
certainties associated with the PIV measurements
of the mean and fluctuating velocity were within
±1% and ±3%, respectively.
Shadowgraph technique was used to image the
spray and determine its droplets size and velocity
distribution. The adopted Z-type setup consisted
of a CMOS high-speed camera with a frame rate
of 1040 fps and a resolution of 1280 × 1024 pixel2 ,
a pair of spherical parabolic concave mirrors with
a diameter of 152.4 mm and a focal length of
1143 mm, and a light source. The light beams trav-
eled towards the first spherical mirror, and the re-
flected light beams from the first mirror then trav-
eled through the test section towards the second
mirror. The camera was placed on the focal point
of the second mirror where the reflected light from
3239
the second mirror was focused. For each test condi-
tion, 815 images were collected using an exposure
time of 15 μs which was found suitable to freeze
droplets (with no blurring) at each frame with a sat-
isfactory background brightness level. An in-house
developed MATLAB code was used to estimate
the droplets size and velocity distributions. The
shadowgraph images were binarized and thresh-
olded such that the liquid column, ligaments with
a large aspect ratio (not considered as droplets),
small drops with less than 5 pixels or a diameter
of 0.0789 mm (as they disappeared in the second
frame), overlapping droplets, and the early region
of the column breakup were all filtered out (omit-
ted). In doing so, the raw images were subtracted
from the background image (i.e., without droplets).
The resultant grayscale images were then converted
to binary images using a proper threshold. The
droplet diameter is determined as the equivalent of
a circular image which has similar projected area.
A bin with 0.0376 mm width was considered to
classify droplets size. The centroid of a droplet is
used to track its motion over successive frames in
a single-frame shadowgraph image. The velocity is
then determined as the distance between the cen-
troid of the same droplet in the first and second
frame over the time duration between the two suc-
cessive frames. The number of images used (815)
was selected to achieve uncertainties less than 5%
and 10% (within 95% confidence level) for droplets
size and velocity, respectively.
2.3. Test conditions
Ethyl-alcohol (95% by volume) was used
to study spray characteristics of a liquid jet
at ug =10 m/s (or Weg =2.7) and ug =15 m/s (or
Weg =5.9). According to the breakup regime map
of a liquid jet in a uniform crossflow (e.g., [1,28]),
this velocity range of crossflow is associated with,
respectively, enhanced capillary and bag breakup
regime conditions. Due to the limitations of the
maximum crossflow velocity, we could not reach
the bag breakup regime with the high solidity ratio
plate (PS67). In addition, due to the geometrical
constraints of the test section, the maximum
liquid jet velocity was vj, max = 4.5 and 7.6 m/s for,
respectively, the crossflow velocity of ug =10 and
15 m/s. Ambient temperature and pressure con-
ditions were kept standard (298 K and 100 kPa).
The properties of ethyl-alcohol are liquid viscosity
of μl = 1.41 × 10-3 Ns/m2 , ρ l = 803.8 Kg/m, and
σ = 0.0228 N/m. Table 1 lists the test conditions.
3. Results and discussion
3.1. Crossflow characteristics
To investigate the effect of turbulent crossflow
on spray characteristics of a liquid jet, the gaseous
3240 M. Broumand et al. / Proceedings of the Combustion Institute 37 (2019) 3237–3244
Table 1
Experimental test conditions.
Case ug m/s Weg
1 10 2.7
2 10 2.7
3 10 2.7
4 15 5.9
5 15 5.9
6 15 5.9
crossflow in the absence of a liquid jet was char-
acterized using PIV. The spray jets studied here
are considered to be diluted as the ratio of the
volumetric flow rate of droplets to that of the air is
small (on the order of 1 × 10−6 ). Also, only a low-
weber-number liquid jets in the enhanced capillary
breakup and bag breakup were studied, and no jet
surface breakup, droplets collisions or coalescence
events were observed in the shadowgraph images.
A similar approach of study on diluted sprays was
recently reported in the literature [29-30]. Several
experiments were carried out using two different
perforated plates with solidity ratios of S=50%
(PS50) and S=67% (PS67), and their results were
compared with the case without grid (WT). To
be able to study solely the difference in terms of
velocity fluctuation level, the mean flow conditions
were kept nearly constant at all test conditions by
adjusting the frequency drive of the blower of the
wind tunnel.
Figure 2 illustrates the PIV dataset for the cross-
flow streamwise mean velocities, ug =10 and 15 m/s,
and the root-mean-square of their corresponding
turbulence velocity fluctuations urms , normalized
by ug . These plots are for the region confined within
the FOV domain (Fig. 1), where the horizontal di-
rection (x) is along the centerline of the test section
and the vertical direction (y) starts from the nozzle
injection point. Figure 2a and b confirmed that the
crossflow mean velocity for different perforated
plates are similar and constant throughout the
domain (FOV), and the rms velocities remain ap-
proximately unchanged with a slight gradual drop
along the FOV domain due to the fact that it is still
in the decaying part of the crossflow turbulence
[25,26]. This implies that the injection of a liquid
jet at a 200 mm downstream of the test section’s
inlet (Fig. 1) is an appropriate location to have a
nearly homogeneous turbulence in the horizontal
direction throughout the FOV domain. Figure 2c
and d shows that ug and urms are also homogeneous
in the vertical direction along the liquid injection
point location, x=0. Figure 2b and d shows that,
using perforated plats with S=50% (PS50) and
S=67% (PS67), the crossflow turbulence intensity
increases from 1.5% (for no grid case) to about
5.5% and 8.5%, respectively. Comparing ug plots
(Fig. 2a and c) with those of urms (2b and 2d), it
can be clearly noticed that, contrary to the solidity
ratio (S), ug does not have a significant effect on
the crossflow turbulence intensity.
vj m/s q Grid type
1.6 16.5 WT, PS50, PS67
3 58 WT, PS50, PS67
4.5 130.4 WT, PS50, PS67
4.5 60.3 WT, PS50
6.3 118.2 WT, PS50
7.6 172 WT, PS50
3.2. Drop size characteristics
In order to examine the effect of the turbulent
intensity of a gaseous crossflow on the distribution
of drops size, measurements in the spray region
(FOV domain in Fig. 1) were carried out employing
Shadowgraph imaging method. Figure 3 depicts
the number fraction of droplets which have the
same diameter per percent corresponding to the
test conditions in Table 1. As was expected for a low
value of Weg and q, drops size exhibits a bimodal
distribution in the measurements domain, which
implies that the liquid jet breaks up in the enhanced
capillary breakup regime. In the breakup regime,
the oscillation of the liquid jet causes the forma-
tion of a neck between the thickened regions (large
droplets) along the liquid column which produces
small size satellite drops after the column breakup.
For the crossflow with ug =10 m/s (Fig. 3a–c), the
peak of the number fraction of smaller droplets
increases from 6% to 8% with increasing vj from
1.6 m/s to 4.5 m/s; while the peak of the larger
droplets remains almost unchanged. On the other
hand, for the crossflow with ug =15 m/s (Fig. 3d–f),
the second peak, associated with the larger size
droplets, gradually diminishes when increasing vj
from 4.5 m/s to 7.6 m/s, whereas the percentage
of the smaller droplets increases up to 18%. This
single peak distribution of the droplets at high
velocity of crossflow and liquid jet flow (Fig. 3f) is
an indication of bag breakup regime. In all these
cases, it is observed that the crossflow turbulence
intensity has a insignificant impact on the droplets
size regardless of the associated breakup regime.
However, as is illustrated in Fig. 3e, it changes
the basic mechanism of the liquid jet breakup
by delaying the transition of the liquid primary
breakup regime from enhanced capillary to bag
breakup mode. According to Fig. 3e, at ug =15 m/s
and vj = 6.3 m/s, drops size distribution in the uni-
form crossflow (WT) shows a single peak profile
with a maximum of 16%, while the distribution
of drops in the turbulent crossflow (PS50) is bi-
modal with 8% for the first peak and a smaller
second peak (by about 2%) than the previous
cases (Fig. 3a–d).
The minimum and maximum number of
droplets sampled from all 815 images of each case
in Fig. 3 (Table 1) is presented in Table 2. A clear
jump in the number of sampled droplets can be
observed for the cases in bag breakup regime with
 M. Broumand et al. / Proceedings of the Combustion Institute 37 (2019) 3237–3244 3241

Fig. 2. Crossflow streamwise mean velocity, ug , and normalized rms urms / ug in x-direction at y =152.5 mm (a) ug ,
(b) urms / ug , and y-direction at x =200 mm (c) ug , (d) urms / ug .

Table 2
The min./max. number of droplets sampled for all the cases in Fig. 3.
Case No: 1 2 3 4 5 6
WT 23/41 22/42 19/29 30/75 239/357 246/358
PS50 27/48 24/45 9/28 31/79 49/141 246/422
PS67 20/46 28/55 19/49 - - -

a single peak distribution (i.e., cases 5-WT and
6-WT and 6-PS50).
To assess the effect of the crossflow turbulence
intensity on the mean diameter of a collection of
different-size droplets under different test condi-
tions (see Table 1), the SMD of the droplets in the
FOV domain depicted in Fig. 1 was also calculated
and tabulated in Table 3. This value for the first
three test conditions (case No. 1 to 3 of Table 1)
was SMD/d j = 2.46 (Figs. 3a–c). This value de-
creased slightly to SMD/d j = 2.20 (case No. 4;
Fig. 3d), when increasing the crossflow velocity
from 10 to 15 m/s, which is still in the enhanced
capillary breakup regime. On the other hand, for
the case No. 6 (Fig. 3f), which is in the bag breakup
regime, this value decreased to SMD/d j = 1.74. In
all the aforementioned cases, similar to the drops
distribution profiles, the turbulent crossflow does
not affect SMD at each specific test conditions
compared with the uniform crossflow. Nonethe-
less, in the case No. 5 (Fig. 3e), SMD is similar
to that of the case No. 6 (SMD/d j = 1.74) for
the uniform crossflow, while it is the same as that
of case No. 4 (SMD/d j = 2.2) for the turbulent
3242 M. Broumand et al. / Proceedings of the Combustion Institute 37 (2019) 3237–3244

Fig. 3. Number fraction of droplets per percent versus drops diameter in the FOV domain for all test conditions reported
in Table 1.

Table 3
SMD absolute values in (mm) for all test conditions re-
ported in Table 1.
Case No: 1 2 3 4 5 6
WT 1.18 1.18 1.26 1.14 0.84 0.9
PS50 1.21 1.21 1.32 1.09 1.08 0.86
PS67 1.2 1.22 1.29 - - -

crossflow. Again, this is an evidence of the role

of the turbulence of a crossflow on the breakup
regime of a liquid jet.
In order to shed more light on the effect of
the crossflow turbulence intensity on the primary
breakup mechanism of a liquid jet, Shadowgraph
images of case No. 5 (Fig. 3e) for both the uniform
(WT) and a turbulent (PS50) crossflow are depicted
in Fig. 4. It is observed that the liquid jet injected
into a uniform crossflow (Fig. 4a) breaks up in the
bag breakup mode [31]. Bags membrane breaks
up into small droplets and the rim of bags disinte-
grates into comparatively larger droplets. However,
the turbulent crossflow (Fig. 4b) shapes the column
into an arc structure [32], leading to the breakup
of the liquid jet in an enhanced capillary mode as
ligaments and droplets are generated, which are
larger than drops formed in the bag breakup mode.
As was observed from the Shadowgraph images,
the velocity fluctuations of a turbulent crossflow
cause the continuous liquid column to fluctuate
Fig. 4. Visualization of a liquid jet injected at vj =6.3 m/s
into a (a) uniform and (b) turbulent gaseous crossflow
with ug =15 m/s.
(i.e., displaces normal to its axis) in a turbulent
more than in a uniform crossflow, with an increase
in the wavelength of the instabilities along the jet’s
column. In the transition region, therefore, the tur-
bulent crossflow establishes a condition in which
the presence of long wavelength instabilities on
the jet’s surface along with surface tension forces
cause the liquid column to break up in the capillary
mode rather than in the bag breakup, where the
aerodynamics drag forces of the crossflow are more
effective. Nonetheless, increasing further the liquid
jet velocity according to case No. 6 (Fig. 3f), it can
be observed that bag like-structures are formed on
the liquid column in the case of both uniform and
turbulent crossflow conditions.
 M. Broumand et al. / Proceedings of the Combustion Institute 37 (2019) 3237–3244 3243

Fig. 5. Droplet mean velocity in x-direction, uD , and y-direction, vD , versus drops diameter in (a) enhanced capillary and
(b) bag breakup regime.

3.3. Drop velocity characteristics Table 4

Drops velocity is another important character-
istic of spray. Hence, the effect of crossflow turbu-
lence intensity on drops velocity distribution is also
examined. Droplets mean velocity uD in x-direction
and vD in y-direction are plotted versus their di-
ameters for both enhanced capillary breakup (case
No. 3) in Fig. 5a, and bag breakup regime (case
No. 6) in Fig. 5b. As expected, for all test condi-
tions and in both breakup regimes, large droplets
have a smaller ranges of uD than their counter-
parts’ small droplets due to their larger Stokes num-
ber, while they have a higher value of vD owing
to their higher y-component momentum. In addi-
tion, vD of large droplets is greater than their uD ,
whereas the opposite velocity trends are observed
for small droplets. This implies that, in contrast
to small droplets, large droplets do not follow the
crossflow easily and consequently penetrate farther
into the crossflow (which also can be observed in
Fig 4).
The effect of crossflow turbulence intensity on
droplets mean velocity distribution of a liquid jet,
as is illustrated in Fig. 5, depends on the breakup
regime of a liquid jet. In the enhanced capillary
breakup mode (Fig. 5a), the crossflow turbulence
intensity associated with the flow cases of PS50
and PS67 causes a reduction in the ranges of uD
particularly for large size droplets, while they have
the opposite effect on the value of vD . By observing
Shadowgraph images, it is observed that increasing
turbulence intensity from 1.5% to 5.5% for the PS50
case causes the liquid column to fluctuate more
in the crossflow, which hinders the liquid column
bending into the crossflow. Such unsteadiness of
the liquid column generates large droplets, which
does not necessarily follow the turbulent crossflow.
This implies a lower uD and a higher vD for the
droplets in the turbulent crossflow (PS50) com-
pared to the uniform crossflow (WT). However,
Stokes number of droplets with the maximum number
fraction for all the cases in Fig. 5.
Case Grid Type tt (ms) D (mm) tD (ms) St
3 WT 0.47 0.29 2.24 4.73
PS50 0.65 0.24 1.54 2.39
PS67 1.23 0.32 2.66 2.17
6 WT 0.29 0.22 1.21 4.15
PS50 0.52 0.22 1.30 2.58
by further increasing the turbulence intensity to
8.5% (in the case PS670), the higher degree of
unsteadiness of the liquid column increases insta-
bilities with longer wavelengths, and hence leading
to a shorter column breakup length. This results in
a reduction in the y-component momentum of the
droplets with a smaller ranges of vD compared to
the two aforementioned cases. In the bag breakup
regime (Fig. 5b), for which most droplets are less
than 0.5 mm, the crossflow associated with PS50
causes a decrease and an increase in uD and vD ,
respectively. This again indicates that droplets
generated by the interaction of a liquid jet with a
turbulent crossflow do not necessarily follow the
crossflow as opposed to a uniform crossflow.
Stokes number for droplets with the maximum
number fraction (Fig. 3) were estimated for each
condition of Fig. 5. It is defined as St = tD /tt ,
where tD = (4ρl D )/(3ρg CD (ug − uD ) ) and tt are
the droplets response time and turbulent time scale
of the airflow, respectively, and CD is the drag
coefficient of a droplet with a diameter of D [29].
Turbulent time scale, tt , is estimated by dividing
the integral length scale by the mean velocity, ug ,
based on Taylor’s frozen turbulence hypothesis
since urms is less than 10% of the mean velocity,
ug [25]. As shown in Table 4, for both cases 3 and
6, Stokes number of droplets is larger than unity,
which implies that droplets are not able to properly
respond to turbulent fluctuations.
3244 M. Broumand et al. / Proceedings of the Combustion Institute 37 (2019) 3237–3244
4. Conclusions
Droplets size and velocity distribution of a liq- [7]
uid jet injected into a turbulent crossflow is exper-
[8]
imentally investigated. Turbulence intensity of the
crossflow is increased up to about 5.5% and 8.5%
by changing the solidity ratio of a perforated plate [9]
from 50% to 67%. For the range of test conditions
explored in this study, the resulting distribution of [10]
droplets size for each specific breakup regime is
found independent of the crossflow turbulence in- [11]
tensity. However, a turbulent crossflow delays the
transition of the liquid jet breakup from enhanced [12]
capillary to bag breakup regime. The crossflow
[13]
turbulence affects droplets velocity distribution of
the spray plume by influencing the formation and [14]
growth of the instabilities on the liquid jet’s surface. [15]
Overall, it can be concluded that, while Weg and q
are known to be the predominantly controlling pa- [16]
rameters of the primary breakup regime of a liquid
jet in a crossflow, the role of turbulence intensity of
a crossflow in the transition of the breakup regimes [17]
and its impact on spray characteristics should not
[18]
be overlooked. It was not possible to change the dy- [19]
namic range of the crossflow’s turbulence studied in
this experiment, and thus, it would be helpful to use [20]
some high fidelity simulations to complement the
present experimental data, as well as extending this [21]
study by including higher weber-number breakup
regimes such as shear breakup. [22]
[23]
Acknowledgments
This research was funded by the Natural [24]
Sciences and Engineering Research Council of
Canada (NSERC).
[25]
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