A hydrodynamic and thermodynamic simulation of droplet impacts on hot surfaces, Part II: validation and applications

A model was previously presented to simulate the behaviour of an axisymmetric droplet impacting on a hot solid surface in the film boiling region (D.J.E. Harvie, D.F. Fletcher, International Journal of Heat and Mass Transfer 44 (2001) 2633-2642). In this paper comparisons against experimental water and n-heptane droplet impacts are made which validate the hydrodynamic and thermodynamic predictive capabilities of the model. Specifically, it is shown that the hydrodynamic behaviour of impacting droplets is predicted accurately below a Weber number of approximately 30, while above this level, at least the initial hydrodynamical aspects of an impact can be predicted. The model is found to reproduce the thermodynamic behaviour of actual droplet impacts when no contact between the solid and liquid phases occurs. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.