Three-Dimensional Velocity and Droplet Size Measurements of Spray Flow (Keynote Paper)

Abstract

The present investigation describes an application of a novel technique of simultaneous measurement of droplet size and three-dimensional components of velocity in a high density spray with swirl. The spray has a complicated and three-dimensional structure caused by mixing with surrounding airflow entrained by high speed fuel jet issuing from a nozzle. The breakup process of fuel film to fine-droplet-cloud, the droplet size dispersion and the velocity distribution of droplets are important factors in practical application of fuel spray for combustors. The conventional technique can be applied to local measurement of droplet speed and size. Recent methods, based on optical and image processing techniques, provide measurement of the velocity and droplet size distribution in observation area or volume. Maeda et al. proposed an excellent measurement technique of the size and the velocity distribution of droplet in spray based on interferometric laser imaging in which the fringe pattern is generated at the out of focus plane by interference between 0th order and 1st order refractions of droplet illuminated by high power laser light sheet. And also, in this technique, the separation of overlapping droplets image has been successfully done by optical method. As a practical application, the size and velocity distributions of droplets in a high density spray without swirl have been measured by this technique. In general, the droplet motion in a spray field is highly three-dimensional. Especially, a spray generated by a swirl nozzle shows complicated droplet motion in the three-dimensional field. In order to analyze the configuration of a complicated spray field, three-dimensional velocity measurement of droplets must be required. In the present paper, a combined measurement technique of the size and three velocity components of droplets in three-dimensional spray field based on doublet imaging technique of droplets and stereoscopic PIV method has been developed. And its feasibility and applicability was confirmed by practical application to measurements of spray fields induced by a swirl jet nozzle using in gas turbine.