Toward reliable numerical simulations of the atomization process

This talk will be very prospective on multiple key aspects and complex features of the numerical simulation of liquid combustion. Even though the concepts and techniques presented here have numerous other domains of application, liquid combustion and more particularly the process of the liquid jet atomization is the one which embraces them all. In the global tendency to reduce fuel consumption and pollutant production, and more generally to control the combustion process within liquid-fuel engines (gasoline, diesel, kerosene, etc.), mastering the production and the turbulent dynamics of the cloud of fuel droplets at the injection and within the combustion chamber is certainly one of the most important topic. Starting from a very large point of view, this talk will be divided into three entangled parts. The first part concerns the mathematical modeling of the different physical phenomena involved and particularly a forthcoming attempt to unify them all within the evolution of a Generalized Surface Density Function (GSDF) [6]. This vision could be a way to finally propose a hierarchy of reducedorder models which apply both on the separated phases [4] and on the disperse regimes [8], see Fig. 1.