Numerical Investigation of the Effect of Supersonic Air Temperature on the Mixing Characteristics of Liquid Fuel

The effect of supersonic air temperature on the mixing characteristics of liquid hydrocarbon fuel injected into three different supersonic airflows elevated in three steps from 373 K to 673 K was investigated numerically. Compressible Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations were solved together with species conservation equation using ANSYS Fluent for two-phase flow simulations including fuel droplet breakup and evaporation. The turbulence model needed to close the RANS equations used the Shear Stress Transport (SST) k-omega model. The Eulerian-Lagrangian model was employed to track fuel droplets in mainstream air, and the Kelvin-Helmholtz and Rayleigh-Taylor (KH-RT) models were used to simulate the droplet breakup process. Numerical solutions were validated using experimental data. The higher the air temperature, the stronger the streamwise vortices downstream of the pylon. When the air temperature was 373 K, the liquid fuel hardly evaporated, but as the air temperature increased, and the mass fraction of the vaporized fuel and the mixing efficiency increased linearly downstream of the pylon. At air temperatures of 523 K and 673 K, the mixing efficiencies were 10% and 51% at the combustor outlet, respectively. The total pressure loss decreased slightly due to droplet evaporation as the temperature increased from 373 K to 673 K.

Automated summary

The effect of supersonic air temperature on the mixing characteristics of liquid hydrocarbon fuel injected into three different supersonic airflows was numerically investigated. The study used ANSYS Fluent to solve compressible Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations and species conservation equations for two-phase flow simulations. The results showed that higher air temperature led to stronger streamwise vortices downstream of the pylon and increased evaporation of the fuel, resulting in higher mixing efficiency. The total pressure loss slightly decreased with increasing temperature due to droplet evaporation.