An Investigation Into Transient Diesel Spray Development Using High Speed Imaging In A Novel Optical Pressure Chamber

The fuel economy and emissions performance of a Diesel engine is strongly influenced by the fuel injection process. This paper presents early results of an experimental investigation into diesel spray development carried out in a novel in-house developed optical pressure chamber capable of operating at pressure up to 50 bar and temperatures up to 900 K. The spatial evolution of a diesel spray tends to experience many transitory macroscopic phenomena that directly influence the mixing process. These phenomena are not considered highly reproducible and are extremely short lived, hence recording and understanding these transient effects is difficult. In this study, high-speed backlight-illuminated imaging has been employed in order to capture the transient dynamics of a short signal duration diesel spray injected into incremental back pressures and temperatures reaching a maximum of 10 bar and 473 K respectively. Subsequently, several geometric parameters of the spray were estimated from the high-speed images. It is envisaged that the new optical chamber and the results presented in this work will enable better understanding and awareness of the relative influence of these transitory phenomena on certain diesel spray characteristics.