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Direct numerical simulation of colliding droplets with intervening nonequilibrium gas film

具有非平衡流动气膜的液滴碰撞直接数值模拟

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Abstract

A direct numerical simulation framework was established to investigate droplet collision in a gas medium in this study. This problem is a multiscale problem owing to the intervening gas film flow that spans from a continuous flow regime to free molecular flow regime. A dual-volume of fluid numerical method was employed, incorporating rarefied gas effects, van der Waals forces, and an adaptive mesh refinement algorithm with an improved gas film thickness calculation method. The emphasis of the investigation is the size ratio effects on the gas film drainage and the transition of collision outcomes. Besides the well-known fact that coalescence is promoted by increasing the size ratio, a trend of suppressed coalescence was observed as the size ratio increased to a certain value. As the size ratio increases, gas film length increases moderately while drainage velocity rises more rapidly, reducing drainage time and promoting coalescence. With further increases in size ratio, the gas film length continues to increase, while the drainage velocity increase becomes more gradual, resulting in a longer drainage time and therefore a suppressed coalescence.

摘要

本文建立了一个直接数值模拟框架, 用于研究气相环境中的液滴碰撞问题, 该问题是一个多尺度问题, 因为碰撞液滴间的气膜 流态变化范围可从连续流态到自由分子流态. 本研究采用了双流体体积数值方法, 该方法考虑了稀薄气体效应、范德华力以及改进的 基于气膜厚度的自适应网格加密方法. 研究重点为粒径比对气膜排气和碰撞结果转捩的影响. 除了众所周知的事实, 即粒径比增大可 促进液滴融合外, 还观察到当粒径比增大到一定值时, 融合趋势受到抑制. 随着粒径比的增大, 气膜长度适度增加, 而排气速度上升速 度加快, 从而缩短了排气时间并促进了融合. 当尺寸比进一步增大时, 气膜长度继续增加, 而排气速度的增加则变得更加平缓, 导致排 气时间延长, 从而抑制了融合.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant Nos. 51806013 and 52176134). The work at the City University of Hong Kong was supported by the Research Grants Council of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China (Grant Nos. CityU 15222421 and CityU 15218820). The authors are grateful to Dr. Chenwei Zhang for his insightful advice about modeling analysis.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Mechanical Engineering, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China

    Ning Wang  (王宁), Zhenyu Zhang  (章振宇) & Changlu Zhao  (赵长禄)

  2. National Key Laboratory of Science and Technology on Multi-Perch Vehicle Driving Systems, Beijing Institute of Technology, Beijing, 100081, China

    Ning Wang  (王宁), Zhenyu Zhang  (章振宇) & Changlu Zhao  (赵长禄)

  3. Department of Mechanical Engineering, City University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong, 999077, China

    Peng Zhang  (张鹏)

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  1. Ning Wang  (王宁)
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Contributions

Author contributions Ning Wang: Data curation, Formal analysis, Investigation, Methodology, Software, Validation, Visualization and Writing – original draft. Zhenyu Zhang: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Resources, Supervision, Writing – review & editing. Peng Zhang: Conceptualization, Funding acquisition, Resources, Supervision, Writing – review & editing. Changlu Zhao: Funding acquisition, Resources, Supervision.

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Correspondence to Zhenyu Zhang  (章振宇) or Peng Zhang  (张鹏).

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Conflict of interest On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author states that there is no conflict of interest.

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Wang, N., Zhang, Z., Zhang, P. et al. Direct numerical simulation of colliding droplets with intervening nonequilibrium gas film. Acta Mech. Sin. 42, 325492 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10409-025-25492-x

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