<p class="MsoNormal">Liquid droplet interactions with solid surfaces are fundamental to a wide range of phenomena from novel manufacturing processes to ablation and fouling build-up on surfaces when these droplets are carried with a flow along flow path.&nbsp; Computational fluid dynamics based simulations offer a controlled environment in which to explore the droplet motion, deformation, or break-up as a droplet interacts with another fluid, other droplets, or solid surfaces.&nbsp; The effects that changes to the material, geometric, or operating conditions have on the droplet conditions and interactions can be investigated numerically by comparing the results of simulations when such parameters or system definitions are altered.&nbsp; The information gained can be used to better control the droplet related processes for an intended purpose. The present work investigates the sensitivity of the predicted motion and interaction of a single copper droplet impacting a cold steel surface to variations in a Volume of Fluid (VOF) based modeling method.</p><p class="MsoNormal">One liquid copper droplet is assigned an initial velocity and is sent to impact a cold steel surface.&nbsp; Solidification at the droplet-steel interface is taken into account.&nbsp; The resulting splat features, particularly the splat height as a function of radial position, are compared to the results in the literature as some aspect of the VOF modeling method is varied.&nbsp; In addition, the total mass of the droplet material is traced with time for comparison of any mass loss among the different modeling methods. The modeling methods or parameters varied in this work include the formulation for the volume fraction, the volume fraction cut-off value and Courant Number, the interface treatment, the interface VOF discretization method and the surface tension modeling method as well as general mesh refinement at the droplet interface.&nbsp; The results of the study provide information that can aid in the generation of a more accurate and efficient means of studying the liquid droplet motion and droplet-surface interactions.&nbsp; Then, the developed computational methods can be extended to the study of multiple moving and interacting droplets. &nbsp;</p>

Volume of Fluid Simulations of Copper Droplet Splat and Sensitivity to Modeling Methods

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/FEDSM/FEDSM2021/volume/85284

ASME 2021 Fluids Engineering Division Summer Meeting (FEDSM2021)

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