Discrete Multiphase modeling of electrostatic sprays

The main aim of this code implementation is to develop a solver that would study the effects of applying a
continuous current to a spray of water droplets or any such liquid. The steps of implementing this is very simple as
the author has taken the Lagrangian approach to solve for particles inside a fluid.

Now OpenFOAM works on a very module based structure meaning you can add on extra feature to an already
existing solver without much trouble. Since there was a solver that already models spray flows using lagrangian
approach we just had to add a source term to induce an electric field. This is first done by adding a scalar field for the
Electric potential and a vector field for the Electric Field. The next step is to determine the particle forces due to the
charged particle and for this a new library is created to account for these electrostatic forces. Again because of the
modular structure of OpenFOAM an existing similar library i.e. Paramagnetic is taken and the loops are changed to
account for the electrostatic Field E.

Once that is done we will have to add all the essentials in the files and options files inside the make folder and
wmake the entire solver and the libraries. Care must be taken to introduce the custom libraries in controlDict file.

The solver was compiled successfully and just like the author two cases were run one with charge applied and one
with no charge applied. The charge value can be change in the sprayCloudProperties file.Most of the chemical data
are fed through a .dat file in the constant file. The results were obtained by converting the data to VTK data and
viewing them in paraview.

Observation.

We can see that the flow pattern of the droplets when charge is applied is more condensed and does not deviate
much from the initial path but at the same time it has a lower velocity whereas in the case where the charge is not
applied the spray tends to spread out but at the same time moves at a higher velocity. The value of these velocities
can be seen in the contour plot as well as by visualizing the same in paraview using line plot tool. Further
information such as the spread and data can also be obtained by using the tools in paraview maybe by determining
the mass flow rate through a particular section so as to determine the difference and thus the spread. The velocity
contour plots at different times for the two cases has been shown below.

Case 1: Electrostatic Field is applied

Figure 1 Figure 2

Contour plot of U mag at Time step = 10 Contour plot of U mag at Time step = 24
 Case 2: No Electrostatic Field is applied

Figure 3 Figure 4

Contour plot of U mag at Time step = 10 Contour plot of U mag at Time step = 24

Figure 5 Figure 6

Line Plot of U Mag along Y-axis along middle of the Line Plot of U Mag along Y-axis along middle of the

sliced Domain (with charge applied) sliced domain (No charge applied)

Peak U = 70m/s (approx.) Peak U = 120m/s (approx.)