No Arabic abstract
The gasification of multicomponent fuel drops is relevant in various energy-related technologies. An interesting phenomenon associated with this process is the self-induced explosion of the drop, producing a multitude of smaller secondary droplets, which promotes overall fuel atomization and, consequently, improves the combustion efficiency and reduces emissions of liquid-fueled engines. Here, we study a unique explosive gasification process of a tricomponent droplet consisting of water, ethanol, and oil (ouzo), by high-speed monitoring of the entire gasification event taking place in the well-controlled, levitated Leidenfrost state over a superheated plate. It is observed that the preferential evaporation of the most volatile component, ethanol, triggers nucleation of the oil microdroplets/nanodroplets in the remaining drop, which, consequently, becomes an opaque oil-in-water microemulsion. The tiny oil droplets subsequently coalesce into a large one, which, in turn, wraps around the remnant water. Because of the encapsulating oil layer, the droplet can no longer produce enough vapor for its levitation, and, thus, falls and contacts the superheated surface. The direct thermal contact leads to vapor bubble formation inside the drop and consequently drop explosion in the final stage.
A liquid droplet hovering on a hot surface is commonly referred to as a Leidenfrost droplet. In this study, we discover that a Leidenfrost droplet involuntarily performs a series of distinct oscillations as it shrinks during the span of its life. The oscillation first starts out erratically, followed by a stage with stable frequencies, and finally turns into periodic bouncing with signatures of a parametric oscillation and occasional resonances. The last bouncing stage exhibits nearly perfect collisions. We showed experimentally and theoretically the enabling effects of each oscillation mode and how the droplet switches between such modes. We finally show that these self-regulating oscillation modes and the conditions for transitioning between modes are universal for all tested combinations of liquids and surfaces.
When boiling occurs in a liquid flow field, the phenomenon is known as forced-convection boiling. We numerically investigate such a boiling system on a cylinder in a flow at a saturated condition. To deal with the complicated liquid-vapor phase-change phenomenon, we develop a numerical scheme based on the pseudopotential lattice Boltzmann method (LBM). The collision stage is performed in the space of central moments (CMs) to enhance numerical stability for high Reynolds numbers. The adopted forcing scheme, consistent with the CMs-based LBM, leads to a concise yet robust algorithm. Furthermore, additional terms required to ensure thermodynamic consistency are derived in a CMs framework. The effectiveness of the present scheme is successfully tested against a series of boiling processes, including nucleation, growth, and departure of a vapor bubble for Reynolds numbers varying between 30 and 30000. Our CMs-based LBM can reproduce all the boiling regimes, i.e., nucleate boiling, transition boiling, and film boiling, without any artificial input such as initial vapor phase. We find that the typical boiling curve, also known as the Nukiyama curve, appears even though the focused system is not the pool boiling but the forced-convection system. Also, our simulations support experimental observations of intermittent direct solid-liquid contact even in the film-boiling regime. Finally, we provide quantitative comparison with the semi-empirical correlations for the forced-convection film boiling on a cylinder on the Nu-Ja diagram.
Liquid oxygen, which is paramagnetic, also undergoes Leidenfrost effect at room temperature. In this article, we first study the deformation of oxygen drops in a magnetic field and show that it can be described via an effective capillary length, which includes the magnetic force. In a second part, we describe how these ultra-mobile drops passing above a magnet significantly slow down and can even be trapped. The critical velocity below which a drop is captured is determined from the deformation induced by the field.
This paper represents a theoretical and an experimental study of the spreading dynamics of a liquid droplet, generated by a needle free deposition system called the liquid needle droplet deposition technique. This technique utilizes a continuous liquid jet generated from a pressurized dosing system which generates a liquid drop on a substrate to be characterized by optical contact angle measurements. Although many studies have explored the theoretical modelling of the droplet spreading scenario, a theoretical model representing the spreading dynamics of a droplet, generated by the jet impact and continuous addition of liquid mass, is yet to be addressed. In this study, we developed a theoretical model based on the overall energy balance approach which enables us to study on the physics of variation of droplet spreading under surrounding medium of various viscosities. The numerical solution of the non-linear ordinary differential equation has provided us the opportunity to comment on the variation of droplet spreading, as a function of Weber number ($We$), Reynolds number ($Re$) and Bond number ($Bo$) ranging from 0.5-3, 75-150, and 0.001-0.3, respectively. We have also presented a liquid jet impact model in order to predict the initial droplet diameter as an initial condition for the proposed governing equation. The model has been verified further with the experimental measurements and reasonable agreement has been observed. Experimental observations and theoretical investigations also highlight the precision, repeatability and wide range of the applicability of liquid needle drop deposition technique.
Volatile drops deposited on a hot solid can levitate on a cushion of their own vapor, without contacting the surface. We propose to understand the onset of this so-called Leidenfrost effect through an analogy to non-equilibrium systems exhibiting a directed percolation phase transition. When performing impacts on superheated solids, we observe a regime of spatiotemporal intermittency in which localized wet patches coexist with dry regions on the substrate. We report a critical surface temperature, which marks the upper bound of a large range of temperatures in which levitation and contact coexist. In this range, with decreasing temperature, the equilibrium wet fraction increases continuously from zero to one. Also, the statistical properties of the spatio-temporally intermittent regime are in agreement with that of the directed percolation universality class. This analogy allows us to redefine the Leidenfrost temperature and shed light on the physical mechanisms governing the transition to the Leidenfrost state.