Primary & Secondary Atomization

One of the major thrusts in our research group is investigating the fundamental behaviors of liqiud atomization. This process is especially important in liquid-fueled propulsion systems, such as, diesel, gas-turbine and rocket engines. In these devices, the system performance is conditioned by the fuel and oxidizer droplet size distributions, which are usually the rate-controlling processes. Evaporation of fuel (and oxidizer) and the ensuing combustion are accelerated if the droplet size is smaller -- any process leading to a reduction in drop size is of prime importance in combustor design. Thus, immediately after the liquid fuel is injected into the combustion chamber, the liquid stream must be disintegrated into droplets. Many techniques, such as swirling, jet impingement, air-blast atomization, and liquid jet in crossflow are used for this purpose in contemporary liquid-fueled combustion devices. We study these processes to identify fundamental physics of primary and secondary atomization phenomena.