International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 62 (2016) 129–137

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International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhff

Numerical investigation on liquid sheets interaction characteristics of

liquid-liquid coaxial swirling jets in bipropellant thruster
Jia-Wei Ding, Guo-Xiu Li∗, Yu-Song Yu
School of Mechanical, Electronic and Control Engineering, Beijing Jiaotong University, Beijing 100044, China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Spray atomization process of a liquid-liquid coaxial swirl injector in bipropellant thruster has been in-
Received 3 August 2016 vestigated using volume of fluid (VOF) method coupled with large eddy simulation methodology. With
Revised 10 November 2016
fine grid resolution, detailed flow field of interacted liquid sheet has been captured and analyzed. For
Accepted 10 November 2016
coaxial swirling jet, static pressure drop in the region between the liquid sheets makes two liquid sheets
Available online 23 November 2016
to approach each other and merge. A strong pressure, velocity and turbulent fluctuations are calculated
Keywords: near the contact position of two coaxial jets. Simulation results indicate that additional perturbations are
Volume of fluid generated due to strong radial and axial shear effects between coaxial jets. Observation of droplet forma-
Coaxial swirling jets tion process reveals that the Rayleigh mode instability dominates the breakup of the ligament. Droplet
Liquid sheet interaction diameter and distribution have been investigated quantitatively. The mean diameter of the coaxial jets
Ligaments is between that of the inner and the outer jets. Compared with the individual swirling jets, wider size
Droplets
distributions of droplets are produced in the coaxial jets.
© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Bipropellant thruster is an executing mechanism in space ve-
hicle, which provide motive power in the orbital attitude maneu-
ver of a space vehicle. In a bipropellant thruster, injection sys-
tem is one of its key components and its atomization performance
directly affects the performance, lifespan and reliability of the
thruster. A coaxial injector consist of an inner orifice surrounded
by a concentric annular outer orifice, is preferred in bipropellant
thruster due to its advantages: high mixing efficiency and better
quality of atomization at lower injection pressure.
Coaxial injectors are employed with different combination of
propellant phase, such as gas-gas, gas-liquid and liquid-liquid.
When the propellants are liquid phase, liquid-liquid coaxial swirl
injectors are widely used. In coaxial swirl injectors, propellants are
discharged from the inner and outer orifice, respectively, in the
form of coaxial swirling sheets. At downstream of the orifice exit,
the inner and outer liquid sheets interact and mix with each other.
The interaction of the liquid sheets influences the atomization pro-
cess, thus the spray characteristics of coaxial swirl injectors could
be quite different from single swirling injectors.
Over the past decades, a series of meaningful studies
are carried out to investigate the characteristics of coaxial
swirling sprays (Hautman, 1993; Hardalupas and Whitelaw, 1996).
∗
Corresponding author.
E-mail address: Li_guoxiu@yahoo.com (G.-X. Li).
Seol et al. (1998) investigated the interaction of inner and outer
liquid sheets of a dual-orifice at low injection pressure. They ob-
served that the spray interaction was affected by the ambient
pressure around the spray. Sivakumar and Raghunandan (1998a,b)
studied the interaction between two thin coaxial sheets, which
were formed by coaxial swirl injectors. The merging and sepa-
ration processes were visualized by still photographic technique.
The results indicated that the hysteresis phenomenon influenced
the spray characteristics of combined spray. In a different attempt,
Sivakumar et al. (2003) revealed that the merging process results
an increase of SMD by 40–50%. Moreover, Kim et al. (2006) inves-
tigated the influence of recess on spray characteristics of a liquid-
liquid swirl coaxial injector. It is revealed that the interaction be-
tween two conical liquid sheets influences the spray characteristics
intensely and they were determined to be close to the side having
larger momentum between inner and outer spray.
In general, these studies focus on the effects of injector geomet-
ric parameters, injection conditions and liquid properties on spray
characteristics such as discharge coefficient, spray angle, breakup
length and mean droplet size. These investigations are significative
to reveal the atomization characteristics of coaxial swirling sprays.
However, the detailed structure of the interacted coaxial liquid
sheets, development of surface instability, ligament and droplet
formation mechanism are still insufficient and need to be further
investigated.
With the development of interface tracking methods and the
improvement of computing performance, numerical simulations
have been carried out to predict the breakup process of liquid

http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijheatfluidflow.2016.11.008
0142-727X/© 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
130 J.-W. Ding et al. / International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 62 (2016) 129–137

jet and provide an effective tool for the detailed study of liquid mark the different fluids. The liquid volume fraction γ is defined
atomization mechanism. Menard et al. (2007) investigated the as

primary breakup of a turbulent liquid jet with the use of a cou- γ (x, y, z )dxdydz
pled level set-VOF-ghost method, detailed information about the γ= 
cell
(4)
cell dxdydz
dense region of spray was described. Desjardins (2008) used a
The flow field can be divided into three regions:
combined level set/VOF method to compute the primary atom-
ization of a straight liquid jet. De Villiers (2004) applied LES-VOF γ = 0 for a cell completely in the gas
method to a round jet and investigated the atomization process γ = 1 for a cell completely in the liquid (5)
under the influence of nozzle flow. Pai et al. (2008) simulated
0 < γ < 1 for a cell of the interface of liquid and gas
the primary breakup of cross flows, and the detail of atomization
was well resolved with 100 million grids. Siamas et al. (2009) The indicator function follows a transport equation of the form
simulated a swirling annular two-phase jet using an adjusted VOF ∂γ
+ ∇ · ( uγ ) = 0 (6)
method. The flow field and Kelvin-Helmholtz surface instability ∂t
has been investigated. Herrmann (2008, 2010) and Hermann et The local density and viscosity in a computational cell are given in
al. (2010) discussed the effect of grid resolution on droplet size terms of the liquid volume fraction by
distribution of a turbulent liquid jet in crossflow, as well as exam-
ined the effect of gas to liquid density ratio on primary breakup
ρ = γ ρl + (1 − γ )ρg (7)
characteristics. Shinjo and Umemura (2010, 2011) characterized
the liquid surface instability that results in primary atomization μ = γ μl + ( 1 − γ ) μg (8)
with the use of a detailed numerical simulation. The dynamics where subscripts l and g respectively represent the liquid and gas
of ligament and droplet formation were investigated based on phases. The interface is treated as a vicissitudinous zone, such that
the simulation results. On the whole, using high performance its exact shape and location are not specifically known. The sur-
computer system and with fine grid resolution, the ligament and face tension force in Eq. (2) cannot be directly calculated. Brackbill
droplet formation process can be captured correctly which is hard et al. (1992) addressed this problem with the continuum surface
to be observed in experiment investigation, allowing a detailed force (CSF) model. Employing the CSF model, we represent surface
study of liquid atomization mechanism. tension force as a continuous volumetric force
In the present study, a code based on a Volume of Fluid (VOF)





 
interface tracking method coupled with a large-eddy simulation F= σ k n δ x − x dS ≈ σ k∇ F (9)
s(t )
(LES) model is developed for computing the spray atomization pro-

cess of a liquid-liquid swirl coaxial injector in bipropellant thruster. where the interface unit normal vector n and the curvature of the
The present research mainly focuses on the detailed flow field of interface κ are given by
coaxial jets and the ligament formation process, thus to reveal



n
the effect of interaction phenomenon on the primary breakup of n= −∇ F , κ =∇·

(10)
liquid-liquid coaxial swirl jets. Further, the Droplet diameter and | n|
distribution of liquid-liquid coaxial swirling jets are investigated 2.2. Numerical scheme
quantitatively.
The present code is developed based on the open source com-
2. Simulation setup putational fluid dynamic toolbox called OpenFOAM (2012). The ex-
ploitation of OpenFOAM (2012) is based on the cell center-based
2.1. Governing equations finite volume method and provides an integrated range of dis-
cretization schemes to solve each term in the governing equations.
In the present calculation, the fluid is considered as incom- In the present investigation, Crank–Nicholson method with second-
pressible Newtonian and isothermal. The mass continuity and mo- order accuracy is used for the time discretion of governing equa-
mentum equations are as follows: tions. For general field interpolations, a linear form of central dif-
ferencing scheme is implemented. Convective fluxes are discretized
∂ ui
=0 (1) with the Gauss linear scheme. For pressure velocity coupling, the
∂x pressure implicit split operator (PISO) algorithm is addressed.

∂ ui ∂ ( ui u j ) ∂p 1 ∂ 2 ui ∂ τi j 2.3. Flow configuration and boundary condition

+ =− + − + Fs + G (2)
∂t ∂ xi ∂ xi Re ∂ x j ∂ xi ∂ x j
In bipropellant thruster, fuel and oxidizer are injected into the
where ui and uj are the velocities, ρ is the density, p is the pres- combustion chamber separately by two coaxial injectors. As shown
sure, Re is the Reynolds number of the flow, μ is the kinetic vis- in Fig. 1, the inner injector has two twisty slots while the outer
cosity, τ ij is the sub-grid scale(SGS) stress, Fs is the surface tension, injector has three twisty slots. During the injection process, pro-
and G is the force of gravity. pellant flows through the twisty slot, thus tangential velocity is
SGS stress can be approximated by the SGS model. The Smar- endued to the fluid in orifice and spray cone emerges due to the
gorinsky model (Harris and Grilli, 2012) is the most widely used centrifugal force.
model that can be written as Propellant injected into quiescent air is considered in the
1 present investigation. The atomization process of individual jets
τ̄i j = 2υt S̄i j − δi j τ̄kk (3)
3 and coaxial jet are investigated. The flow conditions are set as
∂ ū shown in Table 1 and physical properties of the propellant are
1
1 ∂ ūi
where υt = Cs 2 (2S̄i j S̄i j ) 2 is the SGS viscosity, S̄i j = 2 ( ∂xj + ∂xj ) listed in Table 2. The inner path is fuel injector and the liquid is
i
is mean strain rate tensor, the constant Cs is 0.18. Monomethyl Hydrazine (MMH). Meanwhile, the outer path is ox-
The interface between gas and liquid phase is synchronously idizer injector and the liquid is Mixed Oxides of Nitrogen (MON).
computed with the VOF method (Ubbink, 1997), which employs The boundary conditions include uniform pressure inlet, uniform
the volume fraction of one of the phases as an indicator function to pressure on the cylindrical outlet and no-slip walls.
 J.-W. Ding et al. / International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 62 (2016) 129–137 131

Fig. 3. The shape of the drop at t = 16.

1.6

1.4

length/a
Fig. 1. Calculation domain and boundary condition.

1.2
Simulation
Zheng et al

1.0
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14

Time

Fig. 4. The droplet half-length for simulation and Zheng et al. (2005).

present investigation, the mesh resolution is made to be finest to

deal with the detail of the flow field. The resolution of the finest
mesh is 7 μm and the total number of the computational grids is
Fig. 2. Volume fraction contours of swirling jet with different mesh resolution. 15 million. For each case, the computational time is approximately
(a) 28 μm; (b) 7 μm. 360 h on a 72-processor cluster.

Table 1 3. Result and discussion

Flow conditions.

Case Injection Liquid Orifice Chamber 3.1. Code validation

pressure P type pressure Pc

1 0.6 MPa MMH Inner 0.9 MPa 3.1.1. Droplet deformation

2 0.6 MPa MON Outer 0.9 MPa A test case of a droplet sheared by gas flow is simulated to
3 0.6 MPa/0.6 MPa MMH/MON Inner/Outer 0.9 MPa validate the code accuracy in capture the liquid-gas interface. The
boundary conditions are set similar as the experiment of Zheng et
al. (2005). The experiment and simulation conditions are described
Table 2
Physical properties of the propellants. as follows. A drop of radius a = 1, which is sheared by a gas flow,
is located in a square domain of 64 Х 64. At the top and bottom
Item Density (kg/m3 ) Viscosity (Pa.s) Surface tension (N/m)
of the domain, the tangential velocity is prescribed as U0 and –U0 ,
MMH(fuel) 875 8.36 × 10−4 0.034 respectively. The right and left sides of the domain is set as ve-
MON(oxidizer) 1444 4.2 × 10−4 0.026
locity inlet and outlet boundary, respectively. The velocity of the
boundary is given by:
U = 2U0 y/L (11)
2.4. Computational mesh
As time passes, the droplet is deformed by the shear force of
The computational domain should be large enough to contain the gas flow. As shown in Fig. 3, the circular droplet becomes el-
the major features of liquid spray. As shown in Fig. 1, the axial liptical due to the shear flow at t = 16. Fig. 4 contains the evolution
extend of external domain is 12 mm and the divergence angle of of the half length of the droplet. The result shows good agreement
the conical frustum is 70°, large enough to contain the whole cone with the value which was calculated by Zheng et al. (2005).
spray. While calculating a multiphase flow with intense turbulence,
the mesh resolution must be high enough to capture the structural 3.1.2. Comparison with experiment of swirling jet
details of flow. Two cases with different mesh size are presented In this section, atomization processes of swirling jets are sim-
to verify the sensitivity of mesh resolution. As shown in Fig. 2, the ulated using the present LES-VOF model. Simulation results are
influence of mesh resolution on the spray simulation results is ob- compared with experiment results to validate the accuracy of
vious. With the use of a finer mesh (7 μm), the vortices and sur- the code. In the experiment, water is used as the stimulant of
face instability are captured with good resolution. Therefore, in the the propellant and injection pressures are 0.2 MPa and 0.8 MPa.
132 J.-W. Ding et al. / International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 62 (2016) 129–137
(a) 0.2MPa
Fig. 5. Comparison of experimental and simulation photography of swirling spray at 0.2 MPa and 0.8 MPa injection pressure, 0.1 MPa ambient pressure, t = 3 ms.
The boundary conditions of the simulation are set according to
the experiment. Fig. 5 compares the snapshots of experiment
with the results of simulation. At the injection pressure 0.2 MPa,
“tulip” stage spray is formed. As the injection pressure increase
to 0.8 MPa, the spray is fully developed and hollow cone spray is
formed. For each injection pressure, similar spray patterns are ob-
served from direct image comparison. In particular, general charac-
teristics of liquid jet such as spray angle and breakup length show
up good agreement between simulation and experiment. Thus the
accuracy of the code in simulating the swirling jet is indicated.
3.2. Flow field of swirling jets
3.2.1. Individual jets
As a starting point, the spray shape of individual swirling jets
formed by inner and outer orifice is studied. For a pressure swirl
injector, as liquid injection pressure increases from zero, the spray
structure pass thought five stages such as “dribble”, “distorted pen-
cil”, “onion”, “tulip” stages and fully developed spray (Lefebvre,
1988). Fig. 6 shows the formation process of inner spray and outer
spray at the injection pressure of 0.6 MPa. It is obvious that fully
developed sprays are formed at the working injection pressure of
bipropellant thruster (0.6 MPa). Pressure differential and swirl flow
inside the orifice create a liquid film at the exit of the orifice. The
disturbance at the nozzle exit and the gas-liquid relative velocity
induce K-H instability to the liquid film. Meanwhile, the surface
wave grows as the liquid film moves away from the injector nozzle
and eventually breakup into several ligaments. These ligaments are
deformed and tore due to the aerodynamic and surface tension. At
the downstream of the spray, secondary breakup and coalescence
occur and daughter droplets generated.
The velocity vector field of a central section for individual inner
jet is shown in Fig. 7. It is observed that strong vortices are gener-
ated near the liquid-gas interface due to the disturbance of surface
waves. Reversely, shapes of surface waves are changed by these
vortices. Meanwhile, a vortical flow field is generated at down-
stream locations inside the hollow cone zone. As a consequence
of air entrainment caused by the swirl of liquid sheet, recircula-
tion zone is generated and strong turbulent is created inside the
recirculation zone. As time passes, the central recirculation zone
grows larger and move downstream. In consequence, the turbulent
inside the recirculation zone promotes the breakup of ligaments
and droplets secondary atomization.
3.2.2. Coaxial jets
Structure evolution process of coaxial swirling liquid sheets is
shown in Fig. 8. As a consequence of the merging of coaxial sheets,
the spray characteristics are significantly changed. Compared with
the individual jets, liquid surface of the coaxial jets is disturbed
intensely due to the interaction of the inner sheet and the outer
sheet. Large-scale surface wave occurs at the near region of the
nozzle. It grows on the surface of the film along the expanding
sheet and splits the liquid sheet into ligament-like elements.
(b) 0.8MPa
For the individual inner jet and outer jet, the spray cone an-
gles are about 53° and 62°, respectively. Thought it is expected
that the inner jet and the outer jet cannot meet because the spray
angle of the outer jet is larger than that of the inner jet, it is ob-
served that the coaxial jets still merged at the exit of the orifice.
The information of the pressure filed could reveal the mechanism
of this phenomenon. Fig. 9 shows the pressure field of coaxial jet
at t = 0.5 ms, in which the blue line indicates the liquid shape. The
observed pressure filed shows that static pressure drop is caused
by the entrainment of gas in the region between the liquid sheets.
The negative pressure zone makes the two liquid sheets to ap-
proach each other. As a consequence, the merged liquid sheet is
created, whose cone angle is about 56°.
Fig. 10 shows the volume fraction contours of the merged liquid
sheets at the central cross-section of the calculation domain. From
which the circumstantial detail of the merging process of liquid
sheets could be observed. It is interesting to note that the merging
point of the two liquid sheets is not stationary. As time passes,
the merging point moves upstream and the space between the two
liquid sheets is filled of liquid. This may be caused by syphonage
phenomenon due to the negative pressure zone in this region.
In LES calculation, sub-grid scale viscosity indicates the inten-
sity of turbulent fluctuations. Fig. 11 shows the volume fraction
contours and sub-grid scale viscosity of the merged liquid sheets
at the central cross-section of the calculation domain. High sub-
grid scale viscosity is calculated near the contact position of the
two coaxial liquid sheets. The information of the sub-grid scale
viscosity indicates that strong turbulent fluctuations are generated
due to the strong radial and axial shear effects between the coax-
ial sheets. As shown in Fig. 11, additional perturbations and vor-
tices sheds are generated due to the strong turbulent fluctuations.
Meanwhile, the surface instability is affected by the perturbations
and the vortices shed.
3.3. Flow physics of ligament and droplet
3.3.1. Ligament formation from liquid sheet
As the merged liquid sheets are created, three-dimensional pat-
terns occur at the surface of the liquid sheet. The surface pat-
tern for the coaxial jet is shown in Fig. 12. At the near region of
the nozzle exit, additional perturbations are generated due to the
strong radial and axial shear effects between liquid sheets. Due
to the gas-liquid relative velocity, the Kelvin–Helmholtz (KH) in-
stability occurs when the destabilizing effect of shear force over-
comes the stabilizing effect of surface tension. In both axial and
transverse direction, the perturbation grows and wave patterns
can be observed. In Fig. 12, the dashed line indicates the axial
mode wavelength and the solid line indicates the transverse mode
wavelength. The axial mode wave and transverse mode wave grow
rapidly and generate net-like ligaments afterwards.
3.3.2. Ligament length scale
The radius of ligaments that are created by primary breakup
and their local Weg is shown in Fig. 13. The local ligament Weber
 J.-W. Ding et al. / International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 62 (2016) 129–137 133

(a) Inner jet

(b) Outer jet

Fig. 6. Structure evolution process of individual jets.

(a) t=0.5ms (b) t=1.0ms (c) t=1.5ms (d) t=2.0ms

Fig. 7. Velocity vector field of a central section for individual inner jet.

number is defined as
W eg = ρg a|ul − ug |2 /σ
Where |ul − ug | is the relative velocity of the ligament, a is the
averaged radius of the ligament. As shown in Fig. 13, for the in-
dividual jets and the coaxial jets, the points are dispersed around
Weg ∼O(1). For a liquid sheet, when the aerodynamic force and sur-
face tension are alternate with each other, the liquid sheet would
breakup and ligament would be formed. In another words, the liq-
uid sheet are hunting for the condition of Weg ∼O(1), and if the
local Weg becomes O(1), the liquid would breakup and surface
tension would make the liquid elements into ligaments. For the
individual inner jet, the radius of ligaments located in a range
of 30∼60 μm, while the ligaments of outer jet is around 35∼80
μm. For the coaxial jets, the interaction process contribute to the
(12) breakup of the liquid sheets and the radius of ligaments located in
a range of 20∼60 μm.
3.3.3. The mechanism of droplet formation
In Section 3.3.1, it has been indicated that for a swirling jet, the
liquid sheet breakup into several ligaments firstly, then droplets
pinch-off from ligaments. Fig. 14 shows droplet formation exam-
ples of the coaxial jets. For unstable cylindrical ligaments, capillary
waves occur on the ligament due to the surface tension. As a result
of wave interaction, the neck of the ligament becomes thinner and
is pinched off by surface tension.
134 J.-W. Ding et al. / International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 62 (2016) 129–137

Fig. 8. Structure evolution process of merging jets.

model was established for a low speed cylindrical liquid column

(ligament) and the wavelength of the dominate wave is estimated
as

λdom = 4.51d (13)

As shown in Fig. 14, the measured wavelength is about 4.3–4.7

times of the diameter of the ligament, which is exactly the same
as that of Rayleigh theory. The capillary waves pinch off from the
neck of the ligament and spherical droplets are formatted due to
the surface tension force. The diameter of droplet is about 1.7–2.0
times of the ligament diameter, shows a similar tendency of the
ideal model (1.89d).

Fig. 9. Pressure field of the coaxial jets at the central cross-section of the calcula-
tion domain. (t = 0.5 ms). 3.4. Droplet diameter and distribution

Droplet volume distributions for each case are shown in Fig. 15.
Strutt and Rayleigh (1878) introduced the mechanism of this Compared with the individual jet, more small droplets are created
type of instability. According to the Rayleigh theory, a simple in the coaxial jets. The interaction processes also contributed to a

(a) t=0.5ms (b) t=1.0ms

(c) t=1.5ms (d) t=2.0ms

Fig. 10. Volume fraction contours of the merged liquid sheets at the central cross-section of the calculation domain.
 J.-W. Ding et al. / International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 62 (2016) 129–137 135

Fig. 11. Volume fraction contours and subgrid scale viscosity of liquid sheet at the central cross-section of the calculation domain.

  q
dN qDq−1 D
Inner jet: = exp − where q = 3, D̄ = 123.1
dD D̄q D̄
  q
dN qDq−1 D
Outer jet: = exp − where q = 2, D̄ = 142.8
dD D̄q D̄
  q
dN qDq−1 D
Coaxial jet: = exp − where q = 1.8, D̄ = 133.5
dD D̄q D̄

Fig. 12. Surface instability of coaxial swirling jets.
Where D̄ and q are distribution parameters that represent the
mean diameter and the homogeneity of droplets, respectively.
The mean diameter of the coaxial jets located between that of
the individual inner and outer jets. In the Rosin-Rammler dis-
tribution, a larger homogeneity parameter means a good unifor-
mity of droplet size. The distribution parameter indicated that
for coaxial spray, the homogeneity of droplets is deteriorated for
there are more small droplets have been created. As shown in
Fig. 10, for individual spray, the diameter of droplets concentrate
around 10 0–20 0 μm. For the coaxial jets, there are more small
droplets smaller than 100 μm and the largest droplet diameter is
about 350 μm. Thus causes a smaller homogeneity parameter for
the coaxial jets. The distribution of droplet size shows a similar-
ity trend to the length scale of ligament shown in Section 3.3,
which indicates that the droplet size is relevant to the ligament
radius.

4. Conclusion

The present study has focused on the liquid sheets interac-

Fig. 13. Ligament diameter and local Weg .
broadening of the droplet size spectrum. The Rosin–Rammler (R–R)
distribution (Han et al., 1997) for each case are fitted as follows
tion phenomenon of liquid-liquid coaxial swirling jets in bipropel-
lant. By conducting LES-VOF model, the detailed structure of liquid
sheet and the ligament formation process have been studied. The
follow findings have been made:
For both individual and axial jets, a fully developed spray is
formed at the working injection pressure of 0.6 MPa. Thought it

Fig. 14. Droplet formation from ligament (coaxial jets).

136 J.-W. Ding et al. / International Journal of Heat and Fluid Flow 62 (2016) 129–137
Fig. 15. Droplet volume distribution of the spray.
is expected that the inner and outer liquid sheets cannot meet be-
cause the spray angle of the outer jet is larger than that of the in-
ner jet. The static pressure drop between the liquid sheets makes
them approach each other and merged. The merging point of the
two liquid sheets moves upstream as time passes.
Near the contact position of the two coaxial jets, additional per-
turbations are generated due to the strong turbulent fluctuation
which is generated due to the strong radial and axial shear effects
between bipropellant jets. In both axial and transverse direction,
the perturbation grows and wave patterns can be observed. Inter-
action between the two coaxial sheets enhanced Kelvin–Helmholtz
instability. Observation of droplet formation from ligament indi-
cated that the Rayleigh mode instability dominate the breakup of
the ligament.
Compared with the individual jets, wider distributions of
droplets size are measured for the coaxial jets. The mean diam-
eter of the coaxial jet is between that of the individual inner and
outer jets. Meanwhile, the homogeneity parameters of the Rosin-
Rammler distribution indicate that the homogeneity of droplets for
the coaxial jets is deteriorated.
Acknowledgments
The research is supported by National Natural Science and
Foundation of China [Project Number: 51306014] and the Funda-
mental Research Funds for the Central Universities [Project Num-
ber: M13JB00160, M15JB00220].
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