Experimental Investigation of a Hollow Cone Spray Using Laser Diagnostics

Atomization of fuel is a key integral part for efficient combustion in gas turbines. This demands a thorough investigation of the spray characteristics using innovative and useful spray diagnostics techniques. In this work, an experimental study is carried out on a commercial hollow cone nozzle (Lechler) using laser diagnostics techniques. A hollow cone spray is useful in many applications because of its ability to produce fine droplets. But apart from the droplet diameter, the velocity field in the spray is also an important parameter to monitor and has been addressed in this work. Kerosene is used as the test fuel, which is recycled using a plunger pump providing a variation in the injection pressure from 100 to 300 psi. An innovative diagnostic technique used in this study is through illumination of the spray with a continuous laser sheet and capturing the same with a high speed camera. A ray of a laser beam is converted to a planer sheet using a lens combination which is used to illuminate a cross section of the hollow cone spray. This provides a continuous planar light source which allows capturing high speed images at 285 fps. The high speed images thus obtained are processed to understand the nonlinearity associated with disintegration of the spray into fine droplets. The images are shown to follow a fractal representation and the fractal dimension is found to increase with rise in injection pressure. Also, using PDPA, the droplet diameter distribution is calculated at different spatial and radial locations at a wide range of pressure.