Effect of Injection Amount on Diesel Spray Characteristics of Multi-Hole Nozzle

A laser 2-focus velocimeter(L2F) has been utilized for the measurements of the velocity and size of droplets in diesel fuel sprays injected from a 6-hole nozzle. The fuel was stored once in a common rail and was injected intermittently to the atmosphere by using a solenoid injector. The diameter of the nozzle orifice was 0.165 mm. The injection pressure was 60 MPa. The injector solenoid was driven by the current having a waveform consisted of 3 stages; boot, pull, and hold. The injection amounts were set at 0.8, 2.9, 3.9 and 4.7mg by changing the durations of the pull stage and the hold stage. The L2F measurement was conducted at 10 mm downstream from the nozzle exit. The fluctuation intensity of the droplet velocity was found to be larger under the smaller injection amount. It was clearly shown that the arithmetic mean droplet size under the smaller injection amount was smaller than that under the larger injection amount during the hold current duration. There was a negative correlation between the droplet size and the droplet velocity fluctuation intensity. It is considered that the turbulence inside the nozzle enhanced droplet breakup under the small amount injection, because a small needle valve opening caused vortex and cavitating flows inside the nozzle.