Damping effect on impact pressure from liquid droplet impingement on wet wall

Damping of the impact pressure from liquid droplet impingement (LDI) on a wet wall was studied by numerical simulation and experiment. The numerical simulation was carried out for the impact of an axisymmetric spherical droplet on a wet wall using a compressible form of the Euler equations combined with the stiffened gas equation. The impact pressures on the wall were highly damped by the influence of the liquid film prevailing over the wet wall, and the damping effect was formulated as a function of the liquid-film thickness to droplet diameter. The physical mechanism of the liquid-film damping effect is due to the two-stage compression during LDI and its weakening by the diffraction of the shock wave propagated in the liquid film. In order to understand the liquid-film damping effect obtained from the numerical simulation, experiments on LDI erosion on a wet wall were carried out for various liquid temperatures, which generated a thinner liquid film on the wall at higher temperatures by the viscous effect. The experimental results indicated that the LDI erosion rate increased with rising liquid temperatures, which corresponds to the erosion-rate growth at thinner liquid-film thicknesses. This result is consistent with the liquid-film damping effect obtained from the numerical simulation.