A subgrid-scale model for large-eddy simulation of liquid/gas interfaces based on one-dimensional turbulence

Abstract

The interface/turbulence interaction between two fluids in a turbulent environment has an important role in many technical processes, e.g. primary liquid atomization in combustion devices. Primary atomization has a significant role in spray formation and its characteristics. The resulting dynamics typically span 4–6 orders of magnitude in length scales, making detailed numerical simulations exceedingly expensive. This motivates the need for modeling approaches based on spatial filtering such as large-eddy simulation (LES). In this paper, a new approach based on One-Dimensional turbulence (ODT) is presented to describe the subgrid interface dynamics. ODT is a stochastic model simulating turbulent flow evolution along a notional one-dimensional line of sight by applying instantaneous maps that represent the effects of individual turbulent eddies on property fields. It provides affordable high resolution of interface creation and property gradients within each phase, which are key for capturing the local behavior as well as overall trends. ODT has previously been shown to reproduce the main features of an experimentally determined regime diagram for primary jet breakup. Here a new approach called VODT is presented which produces a size-conditioned as well as a total time rate of generation of droplets for given flow conditions at an interface. At the LES level, the total droplet generation from VODT is interpreted as a rate of mass conversion of LES-resolved liquid into unresolved droplets. Preliminary results of applying VODT to a cell with a planar-shear-layer are discussed at the end of the paper.