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Aerodynamic breakup of vaporizing drops is commonly seen in many spray applications. While it is well known that vaporization can modulate interfacial instabilities, the impact of vaporization on drop aerobreakup is poorly understood. Detailed interface-resolved simulations were performed to systematically study the effect of vaporization, characterized by the Stefan number, on the drop breakup and acceleration for different Weber numbers and density ratios. It is observed that the resulting asymmetric vaporization rates and strengths of Stefan flow on the windward and leeward sides of the drop hinder bag development and prevent drop breakup. The critical Weber number thus generally increases with the Stefan number. The modulation of the boundary layer also contributes to a significant increase of drag coefficient. Numerical experiments were performed to affirm that the drop volume reduction plays a negligible role and the Stefan flow is the dominant reason for the breakup suppression and drag enhancement observed. 

Accurate prediction of the dynamics and deformation of freely moving drops is crucial for numerous droplet applications. When the Weber number is finite but below a critical value, the drop deviates from its spherical shape and deforms as it is accelerated by the gas stream. Since aerodynamic drag on the drop depends on its shape oscillation, accurately modeling the drop shape evolution is essential for predicting the drop's velocity and position. In this study, 2D axisymmetric interface-resolved simulations were performed to provide a comprehensive dataset for developing a data-driven model. Parametric simulations were conducted by systematically varying the drop diameter and free-stream velocity, achieving wide ranges of Weber and Reynolds numbers. The instantaneous drop shapes obtained in simulations are characterized by spherical harmonics. Temporal data of the drag and modal coefficients are collected from the simulation data to train a {Nonlinear Auto-Regressive models with eXogenous inputs} (NARX) neural network model. The overall model consists of two multi-layer perceptron networks, which predict the modal coefficients and the drop drag, respectively. The drop shape can be reconstructed with the predicted modal coefficients. The model predictions are validated against the simulation data in the testing set, showing excellent agreement for the evolutions of both the drop shape and drag. 

Aerobreakup of drops is a fundamental two-phase flow problem that is essential to many spray applications. A parametric numerical study was performed by varying the gas stream velocity, focusing on the regime of moderate Weber numbers, in which the drop deforms to a forward bag. When the bag is unstable, it inflates and disintegrates into small droplets. Detailed numerical simulations were conducted using the volume-of-fluid method on an adaptive octree mesh to investigate the aerobreakup dynamics. Grid-refinement studies show that converged three-dimensional simulation results for drop deformation and bag formation are achieved by the refinement level equivalent to 512 cells across the initial drop diameter. To resolve the thin liquid sheet when the bag inflates, the mesh is refined further to 2048 cells across the initial drop diameter. The simulation results for the drop length and radius were validated against previous experiments, and good agreement was achieved. The high-resolution results of drop morphological evolution were used to identify the different phases in the aerobreakup process, and to characterize the distinct flow features and dominant mechanisms in each phase. In the early time, the drop deformation and velocity are independent of the Weber number, and a new internal-flow deformation model, which respects this asymptotic limit, has been developed. The pressure and velocity fields around the drop were shown to better understand the internal flow and interfacial instability that dictate the drop deformation. Finally, the impact of drop deformation on the drop dynamics was discussed. 

Aerobreakup of liquid drops are important to many droplet applications, such as fuel injection. When a liquid drop is subjected to a gas stream of high velocity, the drop can deform and break into small droplets. The drop aerobreakup is controlled by multiple dimensionless parameters. The Weber number (We) has been commonly used to characterize the different breakup regimes. While the effects of Weber and Ohnesorge numbers on the aerobreakup of a drop in unbounded domain have been extensively studied, the effect of the Reynolds number (Re) based on gas properties are less understood and will be investigated by 2D axis-symmetric and 3D detailed numerical simulations in the present paper. Attention will be focused on the moderate We regime, where the drop mostly breaks in the bag mode. In many previous studies for millimeter drops, Re is too large to be relevant. However, for applications where drops are small and the relative velocity is high, Re can be quite small when the drop breaks. Parametric simulations of Re and We are performed to systematically investigate the effect of Re on the drop aerobreakup dynamics. The simulations are performed using the Basilisk solver, where the mass-momentum consistent VOF method is used to capture the interfacial dynamics on an adaptive mesh. The reduced Re is found to induce significant changes in the drop acceleration, deformation, bag morphology, and the bag breakup dynamics, which in turn lead to significant variation in the size and spatial distributions of the children droplets formed. 

Understanding the development and breakup of interfacial waves in a two-phase mixing layer between the gas and liquid streams is paramount to atomization. Due to the velocity difference between the two streams, the shear on the interface triggers a longitudinal instability, which develops to interfacial waves that propagate downstream. As the interfacial waves grow spatially, transverse modulations arise, turning the interfacial waves from quasi-two-dimensional to fully three-dimensional. The inlet gas turbulence intensity has a strong impact on the interfacial instability. Therefore, parametric direct numerical simulations are performed in the present study to systematically investigate the effect of the inlet gas turbulence on the formation, development and breakup of the interfacial waves. The open-source multiphase flow solver, PARIS, is used for the simulations and the mass–momentum consistent volume-of-fluid method is used to capture the sharp gas–liquid interfaces. Two computational domain widths are considered and the wide domain will allow a detailed study of the transverse development of the interfacial waves. The dominant frequency and spatial growth rate of the longitudinal instability are found to increase with the inlet gas turbulence intensity. The dominant transverse wavenumber, determined by the Rayleigh–Taylor instability, scales with the longitudinal frequency, so it also increases with the inlet gas turbulence intensity. The holes formed in the liquid sheet are important to the disintegration of the interfacial waves. The hole formation is influenced by the inlet gas turbulence. As a result, the sheet breakup dynamics and the statistics of the droplets formed also change accordingly.