A novel three-dimensional liquid-fuel spray vaporization, heating, and tracking model for Navy JP-5 fuel is proposed for development and demonstration in this STTR. The proposed comprehensive spray model will account for the various compound classes and their fuel components/species in JP-5 using a statistical approach based upon a Probability Distribution Function PDF. Transient and spatial resolutions within each spray droplet for heat and mass diffusion will be accounted for by using finite-diffusion rate from the droplet core to the surface along with both an effective diffusion and rapid diffusion to predict the vaporization rate in each compound class and their components. Multiple PDFs will be utilized to describe the fractional vaporization rate of each component/species in each compound class. A robust two-step predictor-corrector numerical scheme will be developed to resolve the liquid-phase properties and track the spray droplets within the turbulent combusting flow field as they are heated, vaporize, and exchange mass, momentum, energy, turbulence. The novel spray model will be modular in nature and may be used a Spray Library independent of computational platforms in any CFD code.
Benefit: The proposed development of a novel and comprehensive spray heating, vaporization, and tracking for real military fuels such as Navy JP-5 will substantially improve the sate of the art of current liquid droplet modeling in both research and production CFD codes. The new spray code will provide a highly improved predictions of spray vaporization rates for each chemical species in the actual fuel and thus more accurately predict the vaporization and combustion rates and allow for much better combustors and afterburners designs in particular engines SFC which will result in important fuel consumption savings and would lead to increased aircraft range . Such a spray code as part of a detailed CFD design computations would be of great value and interest to Navy, AFRL, NASA, and all military turbine engines OEMs.
Keywords: multi-component fuel, multi-component fuel, Diffusion-limited mass vaporization, Transient, Spray Vaporization, JP-5 fuel., spray droplet tracking, robust numerical algorithm, Finite-Rate Heating
