The Effect of Viscosity on the Spray Characteristics of Pressure Swirl Atomizer

스월분무특성에 미치는 점성의 영향

In the pressure swirl atomizer, the liquid is injected through tangential passages into a swirl chamber, from which it emerges with both tangential and axial velocity components to form a thin conical sheet at the nozzle exit. This sheet rapidly attenuates, finally disintegrating into ligaments and then drops. The purpose of this study is to measure the spray characteristics according to variation of viscosity of the spray produced by the pressure swirl atomizer. The nozzle tested here were especially designed for this investigation. The discharge coefficient is determined by measuring the volume flow rate with a flow meter and the cone angle of the liquid sheets issuing from the nozzle is obtained from series of photographs of the sheet for various liquid viscosity and injection pressure. And mean drop size is measured by image processing method. It is found that the geometrical characteristics of the nozzle and the variation of viscosity were the influential parameters to determine the spray characteristics such as the cone angle, discharge coefficients and SMD.