In the near future I will be tasked with modeling an ultrasonic wave nebulizer, a device which uses a piezoelectric diaphragm to convert liquid water into mist. I'm wondering what would be the best way to tackle this in software.
My initial idea is to model it as a mixture of two gasses: air and an artificial "mist gas" fluid that would represent the slightly denser mist. After I have a steady-state solution I would go back and do a particle analysis as well. I'm curious if anybody has any insight or advice on this matter. For one thing I am still not sure what kind of properties the "mist gas" will have. From preliminary experiments I have seen that it flows much more viscously than air, but I do not have any derived thermodynamic quantities to work with. Additionally I have seen that water droplets which are dropped onto the nebulizer cause a mist to rapidly form and expand, almost as if they were flash boiling. Again the problem is the numbers, I am not sure how to define a mass flow rate (i.e. how much air is entrained into the mist) or an average velocity.
what are you trying to design and analyze in this case?
what is the goal of the analysis?