Bubble growth in composite water/fuel droplets: Effect on timing of their puffing/micro-explosion

The existing models of bubble growth are reviewed with a view to their possible application to the study of puffing/micro-explosion in composite water/fuel droplets. A simplified version of the Chernov et al. model in the limit of Ja ≫ 1 is demonstrated to be the most suitable for this from the point of view of its simplicity and accuracy. This model is applied to the analysis of timing of puffing/micro-explosion in composite water/n-dodecane droplets placed in air at temperatures varying from 500 to 1000 K. The times to puffing/micro-explosion and bubble growth times for these droplets were obtained based on experiments performed at the National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University. The bubble growth times predicted by this model are shown to be reasonably close to the experimental results. Also the values of these times are very close to those predicted by the direct numerical solution of the underlying equations. • The models of bubble growth suitable to study puffing/micro-explosion are selected. • The assumption of large Jakob number is shown to be suitable for most applications. • The time of bubble growth is much smaller than the time puffing/micro-explosion. • Experiments performed at the National Research Tomsk Polytechnic University. • Model predictions agree with in-house experimental data.