Numerical simulation of electrospray in the cone-jet mode

TLDR

The study presents a robust, computationally efficient numerical scheme for simulating steady electrohydrodynamic atomization (electrospray) processes. The scheme assumes all free electrical charges reside on the interface and is partially validated by experiments. It accurately reproduces the flow pattern and liquid cone‑jet shape, matching volume‑of‑fluid results and experimental measurements of emitted current even near the cone‑jet stability limit.

Abstract

We present a robust and computationally efficient numerical scheme for simulating steady electrohydrodynamic atomization processes (electrospray). The main simplification assumed in this scheme is that all the free electrical charges are distributed over the interface. A comparison of the results with those calculated with a volume-of-fluid method showed that the numerical scheme presented here accurately describes the flow pattern within the entire liquid domain. Experiments were performed to partially validate the numerical predictions. The simulations reproduced accurately the experimental shape of the liquid cone jet, providing correct values of the emitted electric current even for configurations very close to the cone-jet stability limit.