Experimental Investigations of Performance Parameters of Pressure Swirl Atomizer for Kerosene Type Fuel

Author(s):  
Saurabh Dikshit ◽  
Salim Channiwala ◽  
Digvijay Kulshreshtha ◽  
Kamlesh Chaudhari

The process of atomization is one in which a liquid jet or sheet is disintegrated by the kinetic energy of the liquid itself, or by exposure to high velocity air or gas, or as a result of mechanical energy applied externally. Combustion of liquid fuels in engines and industrial furnaces is dependent on effective atomization to increase the specific surface area of the fuel and thereby achieve high rate of mixing and evaporation. The pressure swirl atomizer is most common type atomizer used for combustion in gas turbine engines and industrial furnaces. The spray penetration is of prime importance for combustion designs. Over penetration of the spray leads to impingement of the fuel on walls of furnaces and combustors. On the other hand, if spray penetration is inadequate, fuel–air mixing is unsatisfactory. Optimum engine performance is obtained when the spray penetration is matched to the size and geometry of combustors. Methods for calculating penetration are therefore essential to sound engine design. Equally important are the spray cone angles and the drop size distribution in the sprays. An attempt is being made to experimentally investigate pressure swirl atomizer performance parameters such as spray cone angle, penetration length and drop size at different injection pressures ranging from 6 bar to 18 bar.

Author(s):  
Arvind K. Jasuja ◽  
Arthur H. Lefebvre

A single-component PDPA is used to evaluate the spray characteristics of a simplex pressure-swirl atomizer when operating at high liquid flow rates and elevated ambient air pressures. Attention is focused on the effects of air pressure on mean drop size, drop-size distribution, mean velocity, volume flux, and number density. Using a constant flow rate of 75 g/s, measurements are carried out along the spray radii at a fixed distance downstream from the atomizer face of 50 mm. The air pressures of 1, 8, and 12 bars chosen for these tests correspond to air densities of 1.2, 9.6, and 14.4 kg/m3. The purpose of the investigation is to supplement the existing body of information on pressure-swirl spray characteristics, most of which were obtained at normal atmospheric ambient pressures, with new data that correspond more closely to the conditions prevailing in the primary combustion zones of modern gas turbines. The results obtained are explained mainly in terms of the influence of air pressure on spray structure, in particular spray cone angle and Weber number.


2015 ◽  
Vol 798 ◽  
pp. 190-194
Author(s):  
Mehmet Kahraman ◽  
Guven Komurgoz ◽  
Ibrahim Ozkol

Atomization quality of liquids has a great importance on the performance of combustion engines. In this study the internal flow phenome of pressure swirl atomizer is investigated by using numerical method. The design of swirl atomizer is performed based on the requested atomizer characteristics which are sauter mean diamer (SMD), spray cone angle and break up length. Prediction and understanding of liquid film dynamics in the atomizer inside are the fundamental ways to explore atomizer performance. The purpose of this study is to estimate the air core size and film thickness in pressure swirl atomizer by setting single phase numeric computations. This article concludes that the CFD validated swirl atomizer design can be achieved with the lower computational cost using stream function methodology.


2021 ◽  
Vol 2021 ◽  
pp. 1-10
Author(s):  
Zhengyan Guo ◽  
Yi Jin ◽  
Kai Zhang ◽  
Kanghong Yao ◽  
Yunbiao Wang ◽  
...  

Pressure swirl atomizers are widely used in gas turbine combustor; this paper is aimed at researching the effect of low ambient pressure (0.1 MPa to 0.01 MPa, lower than an atmosphere) on the spray cone angle of pressure swirl atomizer. The spray angle is captured by high-speed photography; then, an image post program is used to process the spray angle magnitude. A mathematical model of a single droplet’s movement and trajectory based on force analysis is proposed to validate the spray angle variation. The maximum variation of the spray cone angle, which is observed when fuel supply pressure drop through the atomizer is 1 MPa as the ambient pressure decreases from 0.1 MPa to 0.01 MPa, is found to be 23.9%. The experimental results show that the spray cone angle is expected to increase with the ambient pressure decrease; meanwhile, mathematical results agree well with this trend.


Author(s):  
Edin Michael ◽  
Santhosh Kumar Keerthi ◽  
Krishna Kant ◽  
Pankaj Kolhe ◽  
Raja Banerjee ◽  
...  

Abstract This work reports experimental and numerical study of primary jet breakup of a pressure swirl atomizer. Experiments were performed in a constant volume spray chamber and the spray pattern was characterized as a function of different liquid/gas density ratios which was achieved by changing the ambient pressure. The liquid/gas density ratio was varied between ≈ 102 to 103 and the axial Reynold number was maintained at 6 × 103. Diffused backlight imaging in conjunction with high speed videography was used to visualize the spray. Parameters like spray cone angle, spray breakup length and flapping frequency was estimated. Additionally, POD analysis was performed to find the sheet instability modes. A corresponding numerical study using Coupled Level Set VOF method was performed keeping the liquid/gas density ratio of 10 and 102 to simulate the primary jet breakup using an in-house two-phase solver developed using OpenFOAM libraries. The solver was validated by following the numerical work of Fuster et al. Effect of computational mesh size on parameters like spray cone angle, breakup length was estimated.


Author(s):  
X. F. Wang ◽  
A. H. Lefebvre

The spray characteristics of six simplex atomizers are examined in a pressure vessel using a standard light diffraction technique. Attention is focused on the effects of liquid properties, nozzle flow number, spray cone angle, and ambient air pressure on mean drop size and drop-size distribution. For all nozzles and all liquids it is found that continuous increase in air pressure above the normal atmospheric value causes the SMD to first increase up to a maximum value and then decline. An explanation for this characteristic is provided in terms of the measurement technique employed and the various competing influences on the overall atomization process. The basic effect of an increase in air pressure is to improve atomization, but this trend is opposed by contraction of the spray angle which reduces the relative velocity between the drops and the surrounding air, and also increases the possibility of droplet coalescence.


2019 ◽  
Vol 213 ◽  
pp. 02055
Author(s):  
Milan Maly ◽  
Jaroslav Slama ◽  
Marcel Sapik ◽  
Jan Jedelsky

This paper compares 2D axisymmetric and 3D numerical models used to predict the internal flow of a pressure-swirl atomizer using a commercial software Ansys Fluent 18.1. The computed results are compared with experimental data in terms of spray cone angle (SCA), discharge coefficient (CD), internal air-core dimensions and swirl velocity profile. The swirl velocity was experimentally studied using a Laser Doppler Anemometry in a scaled transparent model of the atomizer. The internal air-core was visualized at high temporal and spatial resolution by a high-speed camera with backlit illumination. The internal flow was numerically treated as transient two-phase flow. The gas-liquid interface was captured with Volume of Fluid scheme. The numerical solver used both laminar and turbulent approach. Turbulence was modelled using k-ε, k-ω, Reynolds Stress model (RSM) and coarse Large Eddy Simulation (LES). The laminar solver was capable to predict all the parameters with an error less than 5% compared with the experimental results in both 2D and 3D simulation. However, it overpredicted the velocity of the discharged liquid sheet. The LES model performed similarly to the laminar solver, but the liquid sheet velocity was 10% lower. The two-equation models k-ε and k-ω overpredicted the turbulence viscosity and the internal air-core was not predicted.


Author(s):  
D. R. Guildenbecher ◽  
R. R. Rachedi ◽  
P. E. Sojka

An experimental investigation was conducted to study the effects of increased ambient pressure (up to 6.89 MPa) and increased nozzle pressure drop (up to 2.8 MPa) on the cone angles for sprays produced by pressure-swirl atomizers having varying amounts of initial swirl. This study extends the classical results of DeCorso and Kemeny [1]. Shadow photography was used to measure cone angles at x/D0=10, 20, 40, and 60. Our lower pressure results for atomizer swirl numbers of 0.50 and 0.25 are consistent with those of DeCorso and Kemeny [1], who observed a decrease in cone angle with an increase in a pressure drop-ambient density product until a minimum cone angle was reached at ΔPρair1.6~200. Results for atomizers having higher swirl numbers do not match the DeCorso and Kemeny [1] results as well, suggesting that their correlation be used with caution. Another key finding is that an increase in ΔPρair1.6 to a value of 1000 leads to continued decreases in cone angle, but that a subsequent increase to 4000 has little effect on cone angle. Finally, there was little influence of atomizer pressure drop on cone angle, in contrast to findings of previous workers. These effects are hypothesized to be due to gas entrainment.


Author(s):  
Xiongjie Fan ◽  
Cunxi Liu ◽  
Yong Mu ◽  
Haitao Lu ◽  
Jinhu Yang ◽  
...  

Spray characteristics of a pressure-swirl atomizer are investigated using high-speed shadowgraph technique under different pressure drops (Δ P) and fuel temperatures ( T). An image processing method is developed using MATLAB. The results illustrate that the mass flow rate climbs with the increase of Δ P, while the discharge coefficient ( Cd) decreases firstly and then climbs with the increase of Δ P. Δ P has larger effect on the cone angle relative to fuel temperature. With the increase of Δ P, the shape of liquid film changes from ‘onion’ to ‘tulip’ and finally be fully developed spray cone. Meanwhile, the surface of liquid film becomes smoother with the increase of Δ P. The average breakup length climbs, then decreases to nearly a constant value with the increase of Δ P, which is induced by the “Impact wave,” surface wave, and turbulent energy. There are little differences on the shape of the liquid film under different temperatures, and temperature has different influence on breakup length under different Δ P. Both the fuel temperature and Δ P have significant impact on the surface wavelength ( λ) and velocities ( U, V) of surface wave. The width of fuel stream becomes larger with the increase of Δ P and fuel temperature. The results can further deepen the understanding of spray characteristics of pressure-swirl atomizer.


1990 ◽  
Vol 112 (4) ◽  
pp. 579-584 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. K. Chen ◽  
A. H. Lefebvre ◽  
J. Rollbuhler

The spray characteristics of several different simplex pressure-swirl nozzles are examined using water as the working fluid. Measurements of mean drop size, dropsize distribution, effective spray cone angle, and circumferential liquid distribution are carried out over wide ranges of injection pressure. Eight different nozzles are employed in order to achieve a wide variation in the length/diameter ratio of the final discharge orifice. Generally, it is found that an increase in discharge orifice length/diameter ratio (lo/do) increases the mean drop size in the spray and reduces the spray cone angle. The circumferential liquid distribution is most uniform when lo/do=2. If lo/do is raised above or lowered below this optimum value, the circumferential uniformity of the liquid distribution is impaired. The observed effects of lo/do on spray characteristics are generally the same regardless of whether the change in lo/do is accomplished by varying lo or do.


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