MOLECULAR DYNAMICS SIMULATION OF SINGLE DROPLET EVAPORATION UNDER ALTERNATING ELECTRIC FIELD

In this paper, the effect of sinusoidal alternating electric field on evaporation characteristics of three-dimensional suspended water droplet in supercritical nitrogen was studied by molecular dynamics method. And the effects of amplitude and frequency of alternating electric field on evaporation life and instantaneous evaporation rate of single droplet were mainly considered. The evaporation of droplet with 8000 water molecules in the environment of 27 000 nitrogen molecules was simulated and analyzed. Firstly, the physical parameters of water such as thermal conductivity at different temperatures and pressures were simulated using molecular dynamics method, and compared with the theoretical or experimental data. Then, the effect of uniform electric field on single droplet evaporation under subcritical conditions was studied, which was in good agreement with the results in literature, and verified the correctness of the molecular model and evaporation model. Lastly, the evaporation of single water droplet under the action of alternating electric field with different amplitudes and frequencies was simulated. The results showed that compared with the case of no electric field or uniform electric field, the alternating electric field could promote the evaporation of water droplet more significantly. When the electric field frequency was constant, with the increase of the electric field amplitude, the evaporation life of water droplet decreased gradually. Besides, the instantaneous evaporation rate, droplet temperature, and the arrangement structure of water molecules would produce oscillation characteristics with the frequency twice that of the applied electric field at a certain amplitude, and the larger the electric field amplitude, the greater the oscillation amplitude. However, when the electric field amplitude was constant, the evaporation life of droplet did not change monotonically with the increase of frequency, but reached a maximum and a minimum respectively at f=5GHz. The reasons for this phenomenon were explained from two aspects of water droplet energy and water molecular arrangement structure.