Timescales and statistics of shock-induced droplet breakup

Shock-induced breakup of liquid droplets is critical to the development of novel detonation-based propulsion devices, but the fundamental breakup processes are difficult to quantify experimentally. To address this need, this work presents three-dimensional multiphase simulations of shock-induced catastrophic droplet breakup, analyzing the droplet deformation, displacement, and distributions of secondary droplet sizes. The results agree well with existing experimental data and provide insights into how instabilities along the droplets' surfaces help to facilitate their atomization.