Liquid Atomization out of a Full Cone Pressure Swirl Nozzle

TL;DR

This paper presents a comprehensive numerical, theoretical, and experimental study of liquid atomization in a full cone pressure swirl nozzle, revealing flow structures and droplet size distributions influenced by turbulence and centrifugal forces.

Contribution

It combines CFD, theoretical analysis, and experimental data to elucidate the atomization process and droplet size distribution mechanisms in pressure swirl nozzles.

Findings

Identification of two flow regions: boundary layer and solid rotation.

Successful comparison of largest droplet sizes with linear instability theory.

Observation of small droplets influenced by turbulent cascading and centrifugal segregation.

Abstract

A thorough numerical, theoretical and experimental investigation of the liquid atomization in a full cone pressure swirl nozzle is presented. The first part is devoted to the study of the inner flow. CAD and CFD software are used in order to determine the most important parameters of the flow at the exit of nozzle. An important conclusion is the existence of two flow regions: one in relatively slow motion (the boundary layer) and a second nearly in solid rotation at a very high angular rate (about 100 000 rad/s) with a thickness of about 4/5th of the nozzle section. Then, a theoretical and experimental analysis of the flow outside the nozzle is carried out. In the theoretical section, the size of the biggest drops is successfully compared to results stemming from linear instability theory. However, it is also shown that this theory cannot explain the occurrence of small drops observed in the stability domain whose size are close to the Kolmogorov and Taylor turbulent length scale. A Phase Doppler Particle Analyser (PDPA) is used to characterize the droplet size and velocity distribution. Due to centrifugal force, the smaller droplets tend to prevail on the spray axis and a peak close to the Taylor length scale appears progressively in the PDF when increasing the distance from the nozzle. It is then assumed that these small droplets are the results of a turbulent cascading atomization process and that in the near nozzle area, since centrifugal segregation is small, PDF can therefore be fitted with a log-stable law (Rimbert and S\'ero-Guillaume, 2004). The value of the stability index is found to be 1.35 very close to a previous experimental result of 1.39 (Rimbert and Delconte, 2007) but far from a known theoretical value of 1.70 (Rimbert, 2010). This let think about a slightly different underlying process due to the helical nature of the turbulence.