| In this thesis, we develop and test an experimental apparatus capable of examining the effect of turbulence on the evaporation of droplets when the Kolmogorov scale is smaller than the size of the drop (where size refers to the nominal droplet diameter). Traveling drop and suspended drop cases have been studied experimentally and the evaporation rate has also been predicted based on classical computations of transport rates. Cases involving still air, a mean flow with turbulence, and a mean flow without turbulence have been tested. The experimental data matches the theoretical computations for the case of still air and mean flow with no turbulence. There is no accepted computational model that can account for turbulent flow, but the experimental conditions tested so far do not show any measurable effect of turbulence on the evaporation rate. These findings suggest that turbulence is a much smaller factor in evaporation than is mean flow over the droplet. Hence, one suggestion for future work is to study traveling droplets with zero relative velocity to the air in order to focus the analysis on the effects of turbulence with no mean flow. |
