Experimental study of a droplet impacting on a burning fuel liquid surface

• A single water droplet impact on burning fuel liquid surface was studied.
• Three typical impact regimes were found and further discussed.
• The impact velocity has a significant effect on parameters of crater, jet and crown.
• Fire plume has evident influence on the loss rate of the impact velocity.

A series of experiments were performed to study a single droplet impingement on a burning fuel liquid surface with varying impact velocity. The impact droplet diameter used in this experiment was around 2.2 mm. The impacted liquid was alcohol with the burning surface. The impact process was recorded using a high-speed digital camera at 2000 frames/s. The results show that three typical impact regimes appear, including splashing-injecting, splashing-injecting-secondary injecting and splashing-bubble, which are determined by the impact velocity. The maximum crater depth, width and the maximum jet height have a slight increase when the impact velocity ranges from 2.351 m/s to 3.357 m/s, but the maximum heights of the crown are almost constant. As the impact velocity is continuously increased to 3.513 m/s, the maximum crater depth, width and the maximum crown height have a sharp decline. In addition, fire plume has evident influence on the loss rate of the impact velocity.