Heat and mass transfer in evaporating droplets in interaction: Influence of the fuel

The prediction of heat and mass transfer in fuel sprays is a key issue in the design of combustors where the fuel is injected in a liquid form. The development and validation of new physical models requires reliable experimental data. This paper reports on an experimental study to characterize the Nusselt and Sherwood numbers of monodisperse droplets made of fuels having different volatilities and evaporating into flowing hot air. Simultaneous measurements of the droplet size and mean temperature allowed evaluating the heat fluxes that take part in the evaporation. The experimental Nusselt and Sherwood numbers are then compared to the case of an isolated droplet. It appears that these numbers are particularly dependent on the interactions between the droplets in a way that depends on the fuel nature.