Development of a Three-parameter Volume-based Spray Drop Size Distribution through the Application of the Maximum Entropy Formalism

✍ Scribed by Christophe Dumouchel; Hélène Malot

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 1999
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 208 KB
• Volume: 16
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0934-0866
• DOI: 10.1002/(sici)1521-4117(199910)16:5<220::aid-ppsc220>3.0.co;2-d

✦ Synopsis

This work is an extension of a previous investigation on the determination of mathematical volume-spray drop size distributions by the application of the maximum entropy formalism. A two-parameter drop size distribution was derived and was found to give reasonable ®ts with experimental distributions obtained under different experimental conditions. However, as it is discussed, this two-parameter distribution shows critical limitations and cannot be applied in any situations of interest as far as drop size distributions in liquid sprays are concerned. To overcome this problem, a third parameter, equivalent to a drop diameter, is introduced into the procedure. This correction leads to a three-parameter drop size distribution with independent mean, width and symmetry. This function is a generalized gamma distribution and it can cover more practical situations than the previous twoparameter distribution. Furthermore, it is found that, contrary to the two-parameter distribution, the new volume-based drop size distribution shows a corresponding number-based drop size distribution with a physical behavior as the drop diameter decreases. This last result shows the importance of using three parameters to describe spray drop size distributions and that one of these parameters must represent the population of small drops.