Computers & Fluids 42 (2011) 3743

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Computers & Fluids

j o u r n a l h o m e p a g e : w w w . e l s e v i e r . c o m / l o c a t e / c o m p fl u i d

Experimental and numerical modeling of the gas atomization nozzle for gas ow
behavior
Ozer Aydin , Rahmi Unal
Dumlupinar University, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Kutahya, Turkey

a r t i c l e

i n f o

Article history:
Received 3 December 2009
Received in revised form 21 September
2010
Accepted 28 October 2010
Available online 3 November 2010
Keywords:
Gas atomization
CFD
Flow separation
Melt tip pressure

a b s t r a c t
Gas atomization is a widely used process for manufacturing of ne metal- and alloy-powder. To ensure a
stable process with high yields of metal powder, the negative pressure at the melt delivery tube tip base
and no ow separation conditions are necessary for a good atomization process. An important feature of
these jets is that ow separation may occur over the outer surface of the liquid delivery tube for some
conditions. Flow separation cause solidication and accumulation of metal, leading to a shape alteration
of the liquid delivery tube in gas atomization process. Using computational uid dynamics (CFD) software, a parametric study was conducted to determine the effects of atomizing gas pressure on the melt
delivery tube tip base pressure and ow separation. Atomization gas pressures of 1.0, 1.3, 1.7, 2.2, and
2.7 MPa were used in the CFD model to initialize the pressure in gas inlet. CFD simulations were performed and the modeling results were compared with experimental data. These results showed that
the CFD modeling can be used for the estimation of the melt tip base pressure of the nozzle. It is found
that the ow separation formation is strongly dependent on the atomizing gas pressure.
2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction
Atomization relies on a melt and disintegration of that melt into
droplets that freeze into particles. The use of air, nitrogen, helium, or
argon as a gas for breaking up a molten stream is termed gas atomization. The idea is to transfer kinetic energy from a high velocity jetgas expanded through a nozzle, to a stream of liquid metal, resulting
in fragmentation and break up into metal droplets. Gas atomization
of liquid metal using close-coupled nozzle system is used to produce
metal powders with characteristics that cannot be achieved with
other powder production methods. It is often used to fabricate ne,
highly spherical powders typically used in applications requiring
dense packing and good ow characteristics. Alloy powders that
cannot be made with chemical techniques are readily made using
gas atomization. In addition, the rapid cooling rates inherent in the
process show potential to produce amorphous powders with unique
properties. These capabilities ensure that gas atomization will continue to be an important process in powder metallurgy. The atomization nozzle assemblies can be of two types: free-fall, or close
coupled. In free-fall atomizers, the stream of molten metal is allowed
to fall unrestricted until it interacts with the gas jets. In close-coupled atomizers, the stream of molten metal is delivered by a ceramic
conduit (named liquid-delivery-tube) to the interaction zone with
the gas jets [1]. Close-coupled gas atomization is a technique widely
used for the production of ne metal powders by the disruption of a
Corresponding author. Tel.: +90 274 2652031; fax: +90 274 2652066.
E-mail address: ozaydin@dumlupinar.edu.tr (O. Aydin).
0045-7930/$ - see front matter 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.compuid.2010.10.013

molten metal stream by impinging high-pressure gas jets [2]. It was

found that one of the most important feature of an efcient nozzle is
that the highest negative pressure at the melt delivery tube ensures
optimum efciency for a nozzle geometry [3]. For that reason it is
important to determine the melt delivery tube tip base pressure
for a designed geometry by computational uid dynamics.
The occurrence of boundary layer separation can essentially affect the efciency of an entire system [4]. The occurrence of separation, which is a function of atomization pressure and liquid delivery
tube extension, has been suggested to cause liquid metal to be drawn
from the end face of the liquid delivery tube into its outer surface,
where it is exposed to the very cold expanding gas of the annular wall
jet. The extreme temperature difference between the metal and the
gas promotes the solidication and accumulation of metal, leading
to a shape alteration of the liquid delivery tube. Typically, this sequence of events induces a freeze off that ends the atomization process prematurely. Therefore, this separation is detrimental to the
process of gas-metal atomization and should be avoided at all costs.
The goal of the computer simulations is to determine if the desired ow features of an efcient gas atomization process can be
predicted by CFD. Using a CFD software, numerical modeling of a
gas atomization process is studied widely. The Reynoldss averaged
Navier Stokes equations coupled with different turbulence models
were solved using the nite volume code The Navier Stokes Multi
Block (NSMB). Numerical modeling is believed to be an effective
approach to examine the underlying thermal-physics of powder
atomization and numerous mathematical models have been developed for powder atomization over last decade [58]. Nowadays,

38

O. Aydin, R. Unal / Computers & Fluids 42 (2011) 3743

Nomenclature
c
E
~
F
H
M
Mw
p
pop
r
R
~
q
S
Sm

speed of sound
total energy
external body forces
enthalpy
mach number
molecular weight
static pressure
operating pressure
radial coordinate
universal gas constant
heat ux vector
effective temperature
mass added to the continuous phase from the dispersed
second phase

due to the rapid development of computer hardware, direct

numerical simulation is becoming more and more applicable in
the eld of multi-uid ow research [9]. The ow of compressible
atomizing gas jets has been investigated by many researchers by
using numerical modeling and simulation of the gas-only case,
i.e. ignoring, for now, the interaction with the liquid metal [10].
In this study, gas-only ow CFD simulation was modeled in a
close-coupled gas atomizer. The gas eld was generated with a
commercial CFD code, FLUENT 6.3. CFD simulations were performed and the modeling results were compared with experimental data. A parametric study was conducted to determine the
effects of atomizing gas pressure on ow separation.
2. Models and numerical formulation
A modeling study of the effects of atomization gas pressure on
the gas-only ow in the atomization system has been performed
using the CFD code FLUENT 6.3. FLUENT is a state-of-the-art computer program for modeling uid ow and heat transfer in complex
geometries [11]. The commercial CFD software package, FLUENT
6.3, which is based on the nite volume approach, was used for
solving the set of governing equations. The mass conservation or
continuity equation, the momentum conservation or Navier
Stokes transport equations and the energy conservation equation
are numerically solved. For 2D axisymmetric geometries, the continuity equation is given by [11]

@q @
@
qv r
qv x qv r
Sm
@r
@t @x
r

where q is the gas density, x is the axial coordinate, r is the radial

coordinate, vx is the axial gas velocity and vr is the radial gas velocity. The source Sm is the mass added to the continuous phase from
the dispersed second phase (e.g., due to vaporization of liquid droplets) and any user-dened sources. Eq. (1) is the general form of the
mass conservation equation and is valid for incompressible as well
as compressible ows.
For 2D axisymmetric geometries, the axial and radial momentum conservation equations are given by

@
1 @
1 @
qv x
r qv x v x
rqv r v x
@t
r @x
r @r
 

@p 1 @
@v x 2
1
rl 2
v
 r  ~

@x r @x
r
@x 3
 

@
@v x @v r

rl

Fx
@r
@r
@x

static temperature
axial gas velocity
radial gas velocity
swirl velocity
axial coordinate

vx
vr
vz
x

Greek symbols
q
gas density
q~
g
gravitational body force
s
stress tensor
l
molecular viscosity
c
ratio of specic heats

and

@
1 @
1 @
qv r
r qv x v r
rqv r v r
@t
r @x  
r @r 
 

@p 1 @
@v r @v x
1 @
@v r 2
rl
rl 2
v

 r  ~

@r r @x
r @r
3
@x
@r
@r
 2l

vr
r2

2l
v2
v q z Fr
r  ~
3 r
r

where

r~
v

@v x @v v r

@x
@r
r

 is the stress tensor, l is the molecwhere p is the static pressure, s

ular viscosity, vz is the swirl velocity and q~
g and ~
F are the gravitational body force and external body forces (e.g., that arise from
interaction with the dispersed phase), respectively.
Compressibility effects are encountered in gas ows at high
velocity and/or in which there are large pressure variations. When
the ow velocity approaches or exceeds the speed of sound of the
gas or when the pressure change in the system (Dp = p) is large, the
variation of the gas density with pressure has a signicant impact
on the ow velocity, pressure, and temperature. For compressible
ows, the ideal gas law is written in the following form:

pop p
R
T
Mw

where pop is the operating pressure dened in the operating conditions panel, p is the local static pressure relative to the operating
pressure, R is the universal gas constant, and Mw is the molecular
weight. The temperature, T, will be computed from the energy
equation.
Energy conservation equations can be written as:

@E
qr  H ~
v rs ~
v  r  ~q
@t

where E is the total energy, H is the enthalpy and ~

q is the heat ux
vector.
Compressible ows can be characterized by the value of the
Mach number:

M  v =c

Here, c is the speed of sound in the gas:

p
cRT

and c is the ratio of specic heats (cp/cv).

O. Aydin, R. Unal / Computers & Fluids 42 (2011) 3743

39

Fig. 1. Schematics of the annular type nozzle and set-up for measuring the melt
delivery tube tip pressure.

Fig. 3. The grid structure of the concergentdivergent region of the nozzle in

axisymmetric 2D ow eld.

Sutherlands viscosity law resulted from a kinetic theory by

Sutherland using an idealized intermolecular-force potential. The
formula is specied using two or three coefcients. In this study,
Sutherlands law with three coefcients was used.
Sutherlands law with three coefcients has the form:

tional symmetry of the nozzle geometry, a 2D simulation is

performed on one half of an axial section of the atomizer chamber.
The Computational domain and grid structure of the convergentdivergent region of the nozzle in axisymmetric 2D ow eld is
shown in Fig. 2. Because the gap at the throat of the nozzle is
0.2 mm, very ne mesh grid structure is applied in the convergent-divergent section of the nozzle. The simulation starts with a
coarse grid which has a cell number of 344196 (mesh 1). Then further renement is made with a cell number of 487917 (mesh 2) to
make sure that the grid is ne enough to capture the high-pressure
gas dynamics. The nal grid has a cell number of 629222 (mesh 3)
which demonstrates that extensive renement is achieved in the
zones of high pressure gradients and near the wall. More grids
were used in regions of large property gradients and in the vicinity
of the walls (Fig. 3). For all cases studied in this paper, triangular
elements were generated. The inuence of the mesh renement
on the distribution of the melt tip pressure along line 1, line 2
and line 3 was tested and it was dened that the solution was
not affected by the mesh number above 629222 (Fig. 4ac). The
structured grid is able to capture all the ow characteristics and
the ow predictions are consistent with the compressible ow theories and literature [13]. Additional grid independent study conrms that further increasing the grid density has not given more
accurate results or any change of ow patterns. To make sure the
accuracy of the results and to avoid any problems encountered
for solution convergence, very small time step (10e-6) is deployed
which has signicantly increased the computational time for each
simulation.
In order to measure the delivery tube tip pressure, three lines
were used with a one mm interval along the base of the melt deliv-

l l0

T
T0

3=2

T0 S
T S

where l is the viscosity in kg/ms, T is the static temperature in K, l0

is a reference value in kg/ms, T0 is a reference temperature in K, and
S is an effective temperature in K, called the Sutherland constant,
which is characteristic of the gas. For air at moderate temperatures
and pressures, l0 = 1.7894  05 kg/ms, T0 = 273.11 K, and
S = 110.56 K.
Schematics of the annular type nozzle and set-up for measuring
the melt delivery tube tip pressure are shown in Fig. 1. The nozzle
has a throat area of 8.5 mm2, protrusion length of the melt delivery
tube is 5 mm and apex angle of this nozzle is 26. The atomization
chamber and the enclosed ow can be treated with rotational symmetry. Although the atomizer geometry has axial symmetry,
resulting turbulent ow pattern could not have complete symmetry. One could use a 2D axis-symmetric model instead of the full
3D ow simulation, with huge savings in both computing time
and resources. For that reason only half of an axial section of the
atomizer could be used in a 2D simulation. The calculation was
performed on an axisymmetric 2D eld as the atomization nozzle
system has a symmetrical shape.
Prior to the CFD calculations, the geometry was dened and a
grid was generated using GAMBIT 2.4.6. GAMBIT is the preprocessor for geometry modeling and mesh generation [12]. Due to rota-

Fig. 2. Schematic drawing of the computational eld showing the geometry of the boundaries.

40

O. Aydin, R. Unal / Computers & Fluids 42 (2011) 3743

1.10e+5
Mesh 1
Mesh 2
Mesh 3

1.09e+5

Pressure (Pa)

1.08e+5
1.07e+5
1.06e+5
1.05e+5
1.04e+5
1.03e+5
1.02e+5

Atmospheric Pres.

1.01e+5
1.00e+5
0

10

11

The points on Line 1

1.10e+5
Mesh 1
Mesh 2
Mesh 3

1.09e+5

Pressure (Pa)

1.08e+5
1.07e+5
1.06e+5
1.05e+5

Fig. 5. The position of the pressure lines at the melt tip base of the nozzle for the
determination of melt tip base pressure by CFD.

1.04e+5
1.03e+5
1.02e+5

Atmospheric Pres.

Table 1
Nitrogen properties.

1.01e+5
1.00e+5
0

10

11

The points on Line 2

Pressure (Pa)

1.11e+5
1.10e+5
1.09e+5
1.08e+5
1.07e+5
1.06e+5
1.05e+5
1.04e+5
1.03e+5
1.02e+5
1.01e+5
1.00e+5

C (J/kg K)
Thermal conductivity (W/m K)
Viscosity (kg/ms)
Molecular weight (kg/kg mol)

1040.67
0.0242
Sutherland law
28.0134

Mesh 1
Mesh 2
Mesh 3

Atmospheric Pres.

10

11

The points on Line 3

Fig. 4. The inuence of the mesh size on the distribution of the melt tip pressure on
three different lines. (a) Line 1, (b) Line 2, (c) Line 3.

Fig. 6. Comparison of the melt tip base pressure for experimental and CFD solution.

ery tube as shown in Fig. 5. These lines were 1.5 mm long from the
center line of the delivery tube along the base surface. There were
ten measuring points on the each line. The average of the all pressure data obtained from the measuring points is used as the delivery tube tip pressure. The melt delivery tube inner diameter was
3 mm in the experiments. In order to obtain the pressure values
in the simulation the line lengths were selected 1.5 mm in y axis
direction. Three pressure lines shifted 1 mm from each other were
used to improve the accuracy of the obtained pressure values from
the simulation. The average of predicted pressure values of all
points was called as melt tip pressure and was compared with
experimental value.

CFD simulations were performed using a pressure based steadystate segregated implicit solver. Flow turbulence was simulated
using the realizable ke model with enhanced wall treatment,
the latter being one of the available tools in FLUENT to model
the near-wall region. Default values for the model constants were
applied. Some researchers have used ke model to stimulate the
nozzle ow behavior by CFD. Those studies can give some information about the designed nozzle for the improvements of the designs. By treating the turbulent ow with the ke model, Xu
et al. numerically investigated the effects of the protrusion of the
liquid delivery tube on the compressible gas ow [14]. The uid
is nitrogen, modeled as compressible gas with ideal gas law for
density and the gas constants given in Table 1. According to NIST

O. Aydin, R. Unal / Computers & Fluids 42 (2011) 3743

41

duced during each iteration. In a simple form, the new value of the
variable / within a cell depends upon the old value, / old, the computed change in /, D/, and the under-relaxation factor, a, as follows:

/ /old a D/

Fig. 7. Velocity of the gas according to the atomizing gas pressure.

Fig. 8. The schematic of the gas ow separation by vectoral presentation.

database [15], the compressibility factor for Nitrogen at 11 atmospheric pressure and temperature of 300 K is 0.998, in that case
it is reasonably accurate to use the ideal gas law in this simulation.
The boundary conditions are illustrated in Fig. 1. Atomization gas
pressures of 10, 13, 17, 22, and 27 bars were used in the CFD model
to initialize the pressure in gas inlet. The gas inlet temperature was
taken as 300 K. The gas outlet was dened as pressure outlet and
pressure was dened as atmospheric pressure. The temperatures
of all the walls were taken 300 K.
Because of the nonlinearity of the equation set being solved by
FLUENT, it is necessary to control the change of /. This is typically
achieved by under-relaxation, which reduces the change of / pro-

10

To avoid a divergent solution, under-relaxation parameters for

pressure, momentum, k and e is set to 0.2, 0.5, 0.5 and 0.5 respectively, for compressible ow calculations [11]. The difculties associated with solving compressible ows are a result of the high
degree of coupling between the ow velocity, density, pressure,
and energy. This coupling may lead to instabilities in the solution
process and, therefore, may require special solution techniques in
order to obtain a converged solution. For that reason, the energy
equation for the rst 50 iterations was turned on and the energy
under-relaxation at 1.0 was used. The pressure under-relaxation
and momentum under-relaxation were selected as 0.4 and 0.3,
respectively. After the solution stabilized, the energy equation
was turned on and pressure under-relaxation increased to 0.7.
A standard discretisation scheme was used for the continuity
equation while a rst-order upwind scheme was used for both the
turbulence kinetic energy equation and the turbulence dissipation
rate equation. To reduce numerical diffusion, a second-order upwind
scheme was selected for the discretisation of the momentum and energy equations. The relationship between velocity and pressure corrections was calculated using the SIMPLE algorithm. The SIMPLE
algorithm uses a relationship between velocity and pressure corrections to enforce mass conservation and to obtain the pressure eld.
In this approach, higher-order accuracy is achieved at cell faces
through a Taylor series expansion of the cell-centered solution about
the cell centroid. For triangular and tetrahedral grids, since the ow
is never aligned with the grid, generally more accurate results can be
obtained by using the second-order discretisation. The governing
equations for ow, turbulence and energy were solved iteratively
until convergence was obtained. The convergence of the calculation
was judged by the mass ow rate difference between inlet and outlet
boundaries. Moreover a solution was considered converged when
the scaled residuals have been dropped to six orders of magnitude
for the energy equation.
3. Results
In order to validate the computational procedure, comparison of
the present calculations with the experimental data of Unal

Fig. 9. The x component of the wall shear stress on the outer surface of nozzle for different atomization pressures.

42

O. Aydin, R. Unal / Computers & Fluids 42 (2011) 3743

Fig. 11. Velocity vectors (m/s) show the recirculation zone at the melt tip base of
the nozzle.

Fig. 10. Pressure contours (Pa) occur on the outer surface of nozzle for different
atomization pressures. (a) 1.0 MPa, (b) 1.3 MPa, (c) 1.7 MPa, (d) 2.2 MPa, (e) 2.7 MPa.

[3,16,17] was performed. The comparison of the theoretical data

obtained by CFD simulation with the experimental data for the

melt delivery tube base pressure was given in Fig. 6. The trends
of the melt tip base pressure graphs are the same for the theoretical CFD solution and experimental data. The difference between
them was nearly same for all the nozzle gas pressures. Experimental values are only 1115% smaller than the theoretical CFD values.
Espina and Piomelli found in their study that the numerical calculations generally miss the prediction of the aspiration pressure by
1020% (a result consistent with similar numerical data obtained
from supersonic base ow simulations) [2]. Aspiration pressure
values were observed at the melt tip base pressure in the experimental measurements. Pressure measurement at the tip of the
melt delivery tube during the atomization process is not possible.
For that reason, before atomizing each melt, the gas only aspiration
prole of the atomizer nozzle was measured with a digital pressure
transducer to determine the pressure of melt delivery tube tip [17].
Aspiration pressure value was observed at the simulation by CFD.
All the simulation melt tip base pressure values are greater than
the experimental pressures. For that reason, aspiration pressure
values are not observed in the simulations. However, the simulations capture accurately the trends observed in the experimental
data better than previous studies by Espina and Piomelli, as shown
in Fig. 6. This result showed that the CFD modeling can be used for
the estimation of the melt tip base pressure of the nozzle.
The theoretical gas velocity of the nozzle is given in Fig. 7. The
gas velocity has a maximum value of 663 m/s at 2.7 MPa gas pressure and minimum value of 631 m/s at 1.0 MPa gas pressure. This
shows that the gas velocity could not be increased in the order of
pressure increase. For that reason, for an efcient gas atomization
process the geometry can give the maximum gas velocity for the
same mass ow rate of the gas. Hence, efciency of a gas atomization nozzle greatly depends on the geometry of the nozzle.
An important feature of these jets is that ow separation may
occur over the outer surface of the liquid delivery tube for some
conditions (see Fig. 8). The occurrence of separation, which is a
function of atomization pressure and liquid delivery tube extension, has been suggested to cause liquid metal to be drawn from
the end face of the liquid delivery tube into its outer surface, where
it is exposed to the very cold expanding gas of the annular wall jet.
The extreme temperature difference between the metal and the
gas promotes the solidication and accumulation of metal, leading
to a shape alteration of the liquid delivery tube. Typically, this sequence of events induces a freeze off that ends the atomization
process prematurely. Therefore, this separation is detrimental to
the process of gas-metal atomization and should be avoided at
all costs.
As shown in Fig. 9, the large, adverse pressure gradient induced
by the shock causes the boundary layer to separate. Flow reversal
is indicated here by negative values of the x component of the wall
shear stress. Pressure contours occured at the outer surface of noz-

O. Aydin, R. Unal / Computers & Fluids 42 (2011) 3743

43

Fig. 12. The ow separation formation at the atomization of tin: (a) before the atomization, (b) ow separation during the atomization at 2.2 MPa gas pressure, (c) no ow
separation during the atomization at 1.3 MPa gas pressure.

zle are seen for the different atomization pressures in Fig. 10. It is
seen clearly that ow separation is more efcient with the pressure
increase. At the 1.0 MPa gas pressure, ow separation is not observed. If the pressure is increased, ow separation is determined
more efciently beyond the 1.7 MPa pressure. The liquid metal is
drawn into the recirculation zone by the aspiration. Where, lateral
spreading occurs at the tip of the melt delivery tube. In the recirculation zone downstream of the melt tip, the pressure is usually
higher at the centerline. This will force the metal outwards into
the part of the gas stream where it is most energetic (Fig. 11). Flow
separation was observed experimentally as shown in Fig. 12. Before the atomization started the melt tip base is shown in
Fig. 12a, and the ow separation was accomplished during the
atomization of tin as shown in Fig. 12b. On the other hand, no ow
separation was observed during the atomization of tin at 1.3 MPa
as shown in Fig. 12c. The freeze off was not observed during the
atomization of tin due to the sufcient overheating of the melt.
4. Conclusions
Using computational uid dynamics (CFD) software, a parametric study was conducted to determine the effects of atomizing gas
pressure on the melt delivery tube base pressure and ow separation. The melt delivery tube base pressure CFD simulations capture
accurately the trends observed in the experimental data. This result showed that the CFD modeling can be used for the estimation
of the melt delivery tube base pressure of the nozzle.
It is also found that the geometry is very important for an efcient nozzle in order to get the highest velocity at the nozzle exit.
The gas velocity has a maximum value of 663 m/s at 2.7 MPa gas
pressure and minimum value of 631 m/s at 1.0 MPa gas pressure.
This shows that the gas velocity could not be increased in the order
of pressure increase. For that reason, for an efcient gas atomization process the geometry could give the maximum gas velocity
for the same mass ow rate of the gas.
The occurrence of ow separation is affected by atomization
pressure and liquid delivery tube extension parameters. This ow
separation was observed experimentally during the atomization
of tin. For a good nozzle design the ow separation could be
avoided in order to prevent the melt freeze off. It is found that
the ow separation is strongly dependent on the atomizing gas
pressure. As a result of this study, it is concluded that CFD simula-

tions can be used as a good tool for predicting atomization efciency and design improvement.
Acknowledgement
The author would like to gratefully acknowledge support of the
TUBITAK The Scientic and Technological Research Council of
Turkey through Grant No. 107M189.
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