Drop impacts onto cold and heated rigid surfaces: Morphological comparisons, disintegration limits and secondary atomization

This paper addresses an experimental study aimed at characterizing the mechanisms of disintegration which occur when individual water and fuel droplets impact onto heated surfaces. The experiments consider the use of a simplified flow configuration and make use of high-speed visualization together with image processing techniques to characterize the morphology of the impact and to quantify the outcome of secondary atomization in terms of droplet size and number. The results evidence that surface topography, wettability and liquid properties combine in a complex way to alter the wetting behaviour of droplets at impact at different surface temperatures. The relative importance of the dynamic vapor pressure associated with the rate of vaporization and surface roughness increases with surface temperature and becomes dominant at the film boiling regime. The analysis is aimed at giving a phenomenological description of droplet disintegration within the various heat transfer regimes. (c) 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.