In global efforts to reduce harmful greenhouse gas emissions from the transport sector, novel bio-hybrid liquid fuels from renewable energy and carbon sources can be a major form of energy for future propulsion systems due to their high energy density. A fundamental understanding of the spray and mixing performance of the new fuel candidates in combustion systems is necessary to design and develop the fuels for advanced combustion concepts. In the fuel design process, a large number of candidates is required to be screened to arrive at potential fuels for further detailed investigations. For such a screening process, three-dimensional (3D) simulation models are computationally too expensive and hence unfeasible. Therefore, in this paper, we present a fast, reduced-order model (ROM) for inert sprays. The model is based on the cross-sectionally averaged spray (CAS) model derived by Wan (1997) from 3D multiphase equations. The original model was first tested against a wide range of conditions and different fuels. The discrepancies between the CAS model and experimental data are addressed by integrating state-of-the-art breakup and evaporation models. A transport equation for vapor mass fraction is proposed, which is important for evaporation modeling. Furthermore, the model is extended to consider polydisperse droplets by modeling the droplet size distribution by commonly used presumed probability density functions, such as Rosin-Rammler, lognormal, and gamma distributions. The improved CAS model is capable of predicting trends in the macroscopic spray characteristics for a wide range of conditions and fuels. The computational cost of the CAS model is lower than the 3D simulation methods by up to 6 orders of magnitude depending on the method. This enables the model to be used not only for the rapid screening of novel fuel candidates, but also for other applications, where ROMs are useful.
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