MODIFICATION OF AMULTIHOLE INJECTOR TO A SINGLE-HOLE INJECTOR AND SPRAY CHARACTERISTICS OF THE MODIFIED INJECTOR BY TWO DIFFERENT IMAGING TECHNIQUES

Abstract

In the present days, almost all the diesel engines are fitted with multihole injectors. Spray characterization of the injectors by different optical measurement techniques is very important to under-stand the air-fuel mixing and combustion procedure inside the cylinder. Instead of characterization of the dense sprays from a real multihole diesel injector, often a single plume is used to study the spray parameters. In the present work, spray characteristics are studied for a multihole injector with all nozzle holes open and with a single hole open conditions. Experiments have been conducted in a constant-volume, high-pressure, and high-temperature chamber with various injection pressures and at various ambient conditions. A high-pressure common rail injector with six holes is considered for the study. The penetration and cone angle of the spray from each hole are measured, and the hole-to-hole variation is studied. It has been observed that hole-to-hole variations with respect to spray penetration are prominent in low chamber pressures and injection pressures at the initial stage of injection, though they are minimal at later stages of injection. After that, five holes of the injector are blocked by microwelding, and the remaining single plume was studied and the results compared with the original multiplume spray. The study shows that the penetration length and cone angle of the single plume match well with that of the multiplumes at all chamber pressures and injection pressures. Later, the spray from the modified single-hole injector was characterized by two different imaging techniques, Mie scattering and diffused backlit imaging (DBI), to compare the penetration length and cone angle measured by the two imaging techniques. It is seen that the differences in penetration lengths by two imaging techniques are negligible, whereas the cone angles are greater in the case of backlit shadow imaging, particularly at higher temperatures.