Experimental and model-assisted analysis of lamella thinning and breakup in diesel-surrogate fuel-droplet wall impingement under Leidenfrost conditions

Abstract

Hot-wall fuel-droplet impingement affects liquid redistribution, secondary droplet formation, and droplet evaporation in diesel-relevant spray-wall systems. This study investigates the spreading and breakup of single n-hexadecane droplets, used as a single-component diesel surrogate, on a heated stainless-steel wall at 300-500 °C over a Weber number (We) range of 5.77-208.61. High-speed backlit images were recorded during experiments and used to classify deposition, rebound, ejection, fragmentation, and splashing regimes, and to measure spreading-factor histories. The measured spreading histories were compared with a lamella-rim model to evaluate its predictive capability before droplet breakup and to infer the lamella state at experimentally observed breakup instants. The 300 °C cases did not enter the Leidenfrost regime under the present impact conditions and therefore serve as a non-Leidenfrost reference, deviating from the model predictions. For Leidenfrost cases at 350-500 °C, the model captures the pre-breakup spreading trajectory, including higher-We cases that later undergo breakup. Wall temperature has a limited influence on the early spreading stage but more strongly affects later breakup timing after lamella thinning, especially in the intermediate-We regime. At high We, breakup becomes increasingly inertia-dominated. Model-inferred lamella thicknesses evaluated at experimentally observed breakup instants are mainly concentrated between 0.010 and 0.017 of the initial droplet diameter. These results suggest that model-inferred lamella thickness can complement conventional Weber-number and temperature-based regime maps by providing local-state information for breakup timing in hot-wall fuel-droplet impingement models.