FINITE DIFFERENCE DISCRETIZATION EFFECTS ON MULTIDIMENSIONAL DROPLET EVAPORATION MODELING

ABSTRACT

The present work examines the finite difference discretization effects on the predictions of an existing multidimensional fluid dynamical numerical model, which provides detailed information on liquid droplet evaporation in a high-temperature convective environment. It is found that under practically realistic conditions the convection of energy in the droplet interior dominates diffusional transport at the computational cell level. This condition raises questions related to the reliability of the model predictions based on central-difference discretization of the convective terms of the liquid-phase energy transport equation. A hybrid discretization scheme is selected to improve representation of the physical liquid-phase energy transport processes. The hybrid scheme is shown to provide more accurate predictions when a droplet energy balance is used as the criterion of scheme performance. The implications to the overall droplet vaporization behavior are also discussed.