Keywords

Lattice Boltzmann method, droplet impingement, two-phase flow

Abstract

In this work, a two-phase lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) approach is implemented to investigate the hydrodynamic behavior of a single droplet impingement on a dry surface. LBM is a recently developed powerful technique to compute a wide range of fluid flow problems, especially in applications involving interfacial dynamics and complex geometries. Instead of solving the non-linear Navier-Stokes equations, which are complicated partial differential equations, LBM solves a set of discretized linear equations, which are easy to implement and parallelize. The fundamental idea of LBM is to recover the macroscopic properties of the fluid which obeys Navier-Stokes equations, by using simplified kinetic equations that incorporate the essential physics at the microscopic level. Considering the numerical instability induced by large density difference between two phases during the LBM simulations, the particular LBM scheme used in this study has its benefits when dealing with high density ratios. All the simulations are conducted for density ratio up to 50 in a three-dimensional Cartesian coordinate system, and three important dimensionless numbers, namely Weber number, Reynolds number and Ohnesorge number, are used for this study. To validate this multiphase LBM approach, several benchmark tests are conducted. First, the angular frequency of an oscillating droplet is calculated and compared with the corresponding theoretical value. Errors are found to be within 6.1% for all the cases. Secondly, simulations of binary droplet collisions are conducted in the range of 20

Notes

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Graduation Date

2009

Advisor

Kumar, Ranganathan

Degree

Master of Science in Mechanical Engineering (M.S.M.E.)

College

College of Engineering and Computer Science

Department

Mechanical, Materials, and Aerospace Engineering

Degree Program

Mechanical Engineering

Format

application/pdf

Identifier

CFE0002622

URL

http://purl.fcla.edu/fcla/etd/CFE0002622

Language

English

Release Date

April 2010

Length of Campus-only Access

None

Access Status

Masters Thesis (Open Access)

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