Evaluation of the Performance of the Drag Force Model in Predicting Droplet Evaporation for R134a Single Droplet and Spray Characteristics for R134a Flashing Spray

Drag force plays an important role in determining the momentum, heat and mass transfer of droplets in a flashing spray. This paper conducts a comparative study to examine the performance of drag force models in predicting the evolution of droplet evaporation for R134a single droplet and spray characteristics for its flashing spray. The study starts from single moving R134a droplet vaporizing in atomispheric environment, to a fully turbulent, flashing spray caused by an accidental release of high-pressure R134a liquid in the form of a straight-tube nozzle, using in-house developed code and a modified sprayFoam solver in OpenFOAM, respectively. The effect of the nozzle diameter on the spray characteristics of R134a two-phase flashing spray is also examined. The results indicate that most of the drag force models have little effect on droplet evporation in both single isolated droplet modelling and fully two-phase flashing spray simulation. However, the Khan–Richardson model contributes to different results. In particular, it predicts a much different profile of the droplet diameter distribution and a much lower droplet temperature in the radial distance. The nozzle diameter has a significant impact on the flashing spray. A smaller diameter nozzle leads to more internse explosive atomization, shorter penetration distance, lower droplet diameter and velocity, and a faster temperature decrease.