PhD position in Physics: Droplet breakup analysis

Many industrial processes are concerned by atomization, particularly in transport industry. Multi-scale by nature, this process generates liquid structures of diverse shapes and sizes ranging from micrometers to centimeters. Atomization is often divided into primary atomization, near the injector, and secondary atomization, far from the injector. During the latter stage, turbulence plays an important role in breaking up the drops and creating smaller drops. Predicting the temporal evolution of drop sizes during secondary atomization is essential to control these processes.

The aim of this project is to systematically study the evolution and rupture of drops evolving in a turbulent gaseous medium using direct numerical simulation.

For this purpose, an simulations database will be created using the in-house direct numerical simulation (DNS) code ARCHER. It will contain the temporal evolution of thousands of drops. This will allow the analysis of the evolution of the drops up to their breakup. The analysis of this database will thus allow us to refine our understanding of secondary breakup. We will focus on the coupling between the interface, the surrounding turbulence and the internal flow of the drop in order to improve secondary breakup models (SBM). The evolution of the drop surface will be analyzed using stability theory. The multi-scale approach will also be exploited in the drop analysis.

Funding: ANR project DropBreak

Application: Send a message to the coordinator via our website.