Spray Combustion and Atomization

A statistical formalism for describing the behavior of sprays is presented, which includes the effects of droplet growth, the formation of new droplets, collisions, and aerodynamic forces. Criteria for the efficiency of impinging jet atomization are developed. It is shown that if the incident jets have a size distribution of a generalized Rosin-Rammler type, then the resulting spray belongs to the same class of distributions. The size history of evaporating sprays is also obtained from the theory. A spray combustion analysis given by Probert is extended to include more general size distributions and the effects of droplet interactions and the relative motion of the droplets and the fluid. It is shown that the over-all spray evaporation rate is largest for uniform sprays.