The atomization of liquid fuel in gas turbines is one of the key factors that affect the combustion performance. After the adaptation of the k‐ϵ‐turbulence model for two‐phase flows and the definition of the film thickness, this work investigates and reports the influence of different parameters on the behavior of the liquid film on the prefilmer of airblast atomizers. A correlation that can be used to predict the mean film thickness has been developed and is proposed in the present study. This correlation can be used in order to optimize the design of airblast atomizers.

One of the key factors that affect the combustion performance in gas turbines and therefore the amount of pollutant emission and the efficiency is the atomization quality of the liquid fuel. Often reliable droplet size distributions for combustion simulations are missing. In this work a correlation for the Sauter mean diameter based on energy equilibrium is derived and compared to results from three-dimensional numerical simulation of the atomization of a liquid film and to an empirical correlation from the literature. It is shown that the derived correlation agrees better with the results of the simulations than the empirical correlation.

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