Simulation of the First Millimeters of the Diesel Spray by an Eulerian Spray Atomization Model Applied on ECN Spray A Injector

The Fick's law is commonly used to model diffusion problems, but from some time ago it has been also used to model liquid jet atomization and mixing into gaseous atmosphere under certain hypothesis. An OpenFOAM computer model based on this principle has been developed and validated on axisymmetric geometries. This model has also been used to study the atomization process on the Engine Combustion Network (ECN) single-hole Spray A injector. Results have been compared to X-Ray and Mie-Scattering experimental data, showing that the Fick's law and its variants predict well the liquid core but tend to over-predict the spray angle/width in the first millimeters after the nozzle exit.