Evaporating droplets in shear turbulence

Abstract

This paper investigates droplets that evaporate and cluster in shear turbulence with direct numerical simulations. The flows are statistically stationary and homogeneous, which reduces the physical complexity and simplifies the statistical analysis. The mass loadings are about 0.1, the Stokes numbers are about 1, and the Taylor-scale Reynolds numbers are about 60. The simulations show that the clusters are anisotropic and inclined toward the flow direction on large scales, but isotropic on small scales. When the mass loading increases, the clusters contain more droplets, but their size remains unchanged, and the droplets in clusters experience higher vapor mass fractions. When the Stokes number increases, the clusters contain fewer droplets and become larger, and the droplets in clusters experience lower vapor mass fractions. When the Reynolds number increases, the clusters contain more, smaller droplets and become smaller, and the inclination angles of the clusters change.