Droplet evaporation is a significant topic in thermodynamics and multiphase flow. This phenomenon is widely employed in key industrial sectors, including nuclear power containment spraying, engine fuel atomization, and other critical industrial processes. Investigating the underlying heat and mass transmission mechanisms holds profound academic value and critical engineering significance. Over the past century, a wide range of theoretical models have been developed based on the simplification of the physical processes governing droplet evaporation. Nevertheless, the predictive accuracy of the existing models remains severely limited under complex working conditions. The authors systematically review state-of-the-art gas-phase and liquid-phase models for droplet evaporation. To provide guidance for model selection in numerical simulations of droplet evaporation, the advantages, limitations, and applicable operating scenarios of each model are systematically delineated. First, the authors summarize the key physical phenomena occurring throughout the droplet evaporation process along with newly proposed specialized gas-phase models. Second, the authors analyze the advantages, limitations, and applicable scopes of several widely adopted gas-phase models along with newly proposed specialized gas-phase models. Subsequently, the authors detail several mainstream liquid-phase models and the newly proposed liquid-phase models with a systematic analysis of their respective advantages, limitations, and application scenarios. Finally, the current research status and existing shortcomings of the gas-phase and liquid-phase models are summarized, and targeted recommendations for future research directions are put forward. This perspective is expected to provide a valuable reference for numerical simulation of droplet evaporation and related industrial applications.
Ni et al. (Mon,) studied this question.