oa Development of a Spray Characterization Experimental Facility

In the recent years, development of alternative jet fuels is gaining importance owing to the demand for diversifying fuel and cleaner combustion. Liquid fuels have high volumetric energy content and ease of handling therefore preferred by the aviation industry. However, liquid fuels add additional complications in combustion process in thrust generation due to the needed preparatory steps of atomization and vaporization. Alternate jet fuels then must meet the vital needed requirements such as rapid atomization, vaporization, quick re-ignition at high altitude, stable combustion before being used.

At TAMUQ - Micro-Scale Thermo Fluids Laboratory (MSTF), an experimental facility is designed and developed to carry out a detailed investigation on the spray characteristics of jet fuels at different injection conditions. The spray characteristics such as droplet size, velocity and spray cone angle are investigated at different injection pressures. These details are obtained using the state-of-the-art non-intrusive laser diagnostics techniques. Experimental techniques involving both point-wise as well as plane-wise measurements are planned using the Phase Doppler Particle Analyzer (PDPA) and Global Sizing Velocimetry (GSV) respectively to obtain the spray characteristics.

Initially, water is used to tune and establish experimental parameters in TAMUQ spray characterization facility followed by the conventional jet fuel, JetA1. The spray characteristics of water will then be compared with that of JetA1 fuel. This facility will later be used to study the spray characteristics of different gas-to-liquid (GTL) fuels as part of the on-going Qatar Science and Technology Park (QSTP) funded project involving Texas A&M at Qatar (TAMUQ), German Aerospace Laboratory (DLR), and Rolls-Royce (UK). The main objective of this work is to support the initial phase of the QSTP funded project. The spray characterization facility developed at TAMUQ will help to explore the potential of GTL fuels as an environmental friendly, alternate jet fuel.