- 期刊
- OpenAccess
Numerical Investigation of Electrospray Cone-jet Dependence on Electrode Configuration
摘要
Electrospray, or Electrohydrodynamic Atomization (EHDA), is a process in which high electric potential is used to create micro/nanoscale liquid droplets. When a liquid interface is exposed to an electric field, its surface is deformed into a cone whose apex originates a jet. Liquid jet is elongated and destabilized, producing droplets. This technique is widely used in many disciplines including chemistry, biology, pharmaceutics, manufacturing, space propulsion due to its low cost, spray efficiency, and controllability. Characteristics of the electrospray cone-jet mode are found to depend on several factors such as applied voltage, flow rate, interelectrode distance, nozzle diameter, and the configuration of the electrode, etc. In this paper, the behavior of the cone-jet mode under two different configurations is numerically studied utilizing OpenFOAM. A solver based on the Taylor-Melcher leaky-dielectric model is used, accompanied by the VOF method for interface tracking to perform transient Multiphysics simulations. Validation analyses denote good correlation between simulation results and established theoretical scaling law. Additionally, simulations show that electrode configurations have an impact on electric field promotion as well as liquid deposition. Further investigations on the physics of other electrode configurations can be carried out with the proposed methods.