Abstract:
This work describes a post-processing scheme for multiphase flow systems to characterize
primary atomization. The scheme relies on the 2D fast Fourier transform (FFT) to separate the
inherently multi-scale features present in the flow results. Emphasis is put on the robust quantitative
analysis enabled by this scheme, with this work specifically focusing on comparing atomizer nozzle
designs. The generalized finite difference (GFD) method is used to simulate a high pressure gas
injected into a viscous liquid stream. The proposed scheme is applied to time-averaged results
exclusively. The scheme is used to evaluate both the surface and volume features of the fluid
system. Due to the better recovery of small-scale features using the proposed scheme, the benefits of
post-processing multiphase surface information rather than fluid volume information was shown.
While the volume information lacks the fine-scale details of the surface information, the duality
between interfaces and fluid volumes leads to similar trends related to the large-scale spatial structure
recovered from both surface- and volume-based data sets.
