Well-posedness of an evaporation model for a spherical droplet exposed to an air flow

Abstract

In this paper, we address the well-posedness of an evaporation model for a spherical liquid droplet taking into account the convective impact of an air flow in the ambient gas phase. From a mathematical perspective, we are dealing with a coupled ODE-PDE system for the droplet radius, the temperature distribution, and the vapor concentration. The nonlinear coupling arises from the evaporation rate modeled by the Hertz-Knudsen equation. Under physically meaningful assumptions, we prove existence and uniqueness of a weak solution until the droplet has evaporated completely. Numerical simulations are performed to illustrate how different air flows affect the evaporation process.