Direct Numerical Simulation of the Phase Change and Heat Transfer of a Vaporizing Droplet

A mechanistic evaporation model has been formulated from basic governing equations and implemented into a finite-volume type Computational Fluid Dynamics code. Application to cases of cold as well as combusting spherical droplets has shown reasonable agreement with classical theories. Numerical noise at the gas-liquid interface resulting in the loss of spherical symmetry for the combusting case remains a problem to be overcome. Overall, however, feasibility of modeling the combusting droplet problem from first principles has been demonstrated. 9 refs.