A new model for predicting the required pressure difference for pressure swirl atomizers

Abstract

Prior to this study an investigation is made to analyze the accuracies of the semi-empirical correlations of the previous studies by comparing them with a large number of experimental data which is extracted from the works of various researchers. Results have shown that even though performance parameters such as exit velocity and droplet size can be predicted accurately, high errors are present in the calculation of required pressure difference to achieve the given mass flow rate. In this study a new model for predicting required pressure difference is presented. Internal flow is analyzed by combining the boundary layer equations with the hydrodynamic loss correlations. Moreover, the prediction of the film thickness is done without adopting the maximum flow rate assumption. Comparisons with the experimental data has shown that pressure difference and film thickness of open-type pressure swirl atomizers can be predicted with less than 25 % error.