Impingement of aviation fuel drop on stainless steel surface

Abstract

Drop impact on surfaces is a key area of interest since the pioneering works by Worthington in the 1800s and plays an essential role in modeling the spray drop interaction with solid surfaces. The present study is an experimental investigation of the impingement of Jet A-1 drop on smooth stainless steel surface with Weber number, We ranging from 25 to 570. High speed digital imaging as well as video microscopy is employed to study the various characteristics of the interaction process. Primary measurements extracted from the high speed frames of drop impact process included the trends of drop size and impact velocity with impact height, and the temporal variation of spread factor of drop on the stainless steel surface. Secondary measurements extracted from these, to elucidate the various features of drop impact dynamics, included the power dependence of spread factor on time and the average rate of spreading during the spreading phase, maximum spread, time taken for attaining maximum spread, and the final spread. Trends highlighting the variation of these secondary measurements with the impact velocity were also obtained. Comparisons of the observed trends of secondary measurements with theoretical and semi-empirical models reported in literature were performed to study the suitability of application of these models to the impact dynamics of Jet A-1 drop on the target surface.