Evaluation of droplet drag force model on spray and atomization behaviours of R134a flashing spray

Flashing spray is of great importance in a variety of engineering fields, which occurs as the pressurized liquid is released into a low-pressure environment below its saturation pressure. This paper conducts a systematically numerical study on the spray and thermal characteristics of R134a flashing spray with high volatility and low saturation temperature, using a modified sprayFoam solver in the open source tool OpenFOAM-2.4.0. Key physics involved in the complex process, including droplet flash boiling, evaporation, droplet transport, breakup, heat transfer and interaction between droplet and gas phases are taken into consideration. The emphasis is put on the droplet drag force model and nozzle diameter on flashing spray including spray morphology, droplet diameter, velocity and temperature. The result indicates that most of the drag force models have little effect on droplet diameter, velocity and temperature distributions in flashing spray, except the Khan-Richardson (K-R) model. The K-R model predicts lower temperature, higher velocity and larger size of droplet, compared to other models. The nozzle diameter greatly affects R134a spray morphology and tip penetration, that smaller diameter contributes to a larger radial expansion at the near nozzle region while leading to a much smaller penetration distance. This research give a useful guidance that how people choose the appropriate drag force model for simulation of flashing spray.