A finite element method study of Eulerian droplets impingement models

To compute droplet impingement on airfoils, an Eulerian model for air flows containing water droplets is proposed as an alternative to the traditional Lagrangian particle tracking approach. Appropriate boundary conditions are presented for the droplets equations, with a stability analysis of the solution near the airfoil surface. Several finite element formulations are proposed to solve the droplets equations, based on conservative and non-conservative forms and using different stabilization terms. Numerical results on single and multi-elements airfoils for droplets of mean volume diameter, as well as for a Langmuir distribution of diameters, are presented and validated against measured values.