On the use of LES-PDF form of the Eulerian-Lagrangian Spray Atomisation (ELSA) model to simulate air blast atomisation

This paper employs the Eulerian-Lagrangian Spray Atomisation (ELSA) model to predict the structure of atomising air-blast spray jets stabilised on the Sydney needle burner. The subgrid joint probability density function (PDF) of liquid volume fraction and surface density is solved in the LES framework to characterise the spray breakup. Two spray jets are used for validation and predictions and measurements of the normalised liquid volume fraction are compared. This paper focuses on reporting the effects of mesh size and subgrid Schmidt number, and it is found that the lower Weber number spray case is more sensitive to these parameters. While significant development is still needed, the initial results are encouraging and point to a good prospect in resolving the structure of the primary atomisation region.