Merging of liquid droplets during agglomeration on a combustion surface

When burning high-energy mixed compositions, conditions may arise under which the particles included in the conglomerate melt. In this case, the contacting molten particles merge under the action of surface tension forces and form an agglomerate. The paper proposes a technique for modeling the merging of liquid droplets during the process of agglomeration on the combustion surface. The technique is based on the use of the smoothed particle method (SPH). Problem similarity criteria are presented. Numerical modeling of the processes of merging 2, 3, and 2000 spherical drops was carried out. Mass distribution functions have been obtained. It is shown that the process of agglomeration of large structures consists of two stages. At the first stage, the merging of liquid drops occurs, which at the initial moment of time have points of contact with other drops. At the second stage, an important role is played by nonstationary processes that describe the dynamics of changes in the free surface, which in the general case depend on surface tension, viscosity, and density of the liquid.