Study of the Influences of Unsteadiness on the Multicomponent Fuel Droplets

The aim of present article is investigation of evaporation of single- and multi-component fuels droplet and study the effect of unsteadiness term on it. Two approaches are used; a fully transient and quasi-steady approaches. The species, momentum, and energy equations for gas phase and species and energy equations for liquid phase are solve numerically by assuming variable properties with respect to temperature. The results obtained from the fully transient approach show an acceptable compliance with experimental data at atmospheric pressure in a wide range of fuel volatility and ambient temperature for the single- and multi-component fuels. Heptane, decane, and hexadecane are used in order to investigate the effects of fuel volatility on evaporation.The steadiness of processes in the gas phase has been checked by using two measures of unsteadiness related to the mass and heat diffusion of fuel vapor on the droplet surface. The deviations of the results of the quasi-steady approach from the fully transient have been justified by the unsteadiness measures. The results show that fuel and ambient temperature have significant effects on the unsteadiness. For heavier fuels and higher ambient temperature, the diviation of quasi- steady approach from fully transient increases. Also the diviation becomes higher when the differences between volatility of component increase. Therefore, it is concluded that the quasi-steady approach presents reasonable results for lighter fuels in the case of single component and whenever the volatilities of components are very close.