Coalescence of vaporizing kerosene fuel sprays in a turbulent jet

A simulation of experimental data for the evolution of drop size spectra of fuel sprays produced by a turbulent jet atomizer is carried out. A Lagrangian sectional approach is used to treat the polydisperse drop populations whereas the Eulerian approach is retained for the treatment of the gas flow field. Comparison between the theoretical results of the present simulation and experimental data reported by Yuel et al. indicates that under certain operating conditions coalescence significantly affects the downstream drop size spectrum. Specifically, coalescence was found to be dominant very close to the center of the jet while close to the edges of the jet vaporization remained dominant.