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A swirl injector for GDI application was used to inject an iso-octane spray in a quiescent chamber, to study the effect of the air density on the spray behavior. Stroboscopic images are recorded at different delays from the injection trigger to study the spray shape and structure. The temporal evolution of different spray parameters, length, width, angle, volume, instantaneous global air-fuel ratio, is calculated from the images. The effect of the increasing air density is to shorten the time and length scale of the spray evolution.

The effects of fuel temperature on both the geometry and the droplet size and velocity of a GDI swirled injector spray were investigated by means of visualizations and PDA measurements. Isooctane was used as model fuel and was injected in a quiescent bomb at injection pressure of 7 MPa. Bomb pressure ranged from 40 kPa to 800 kPa with injector nozzle temperature ranging from 293 K to 393 K. A drastic change in spray geometry was observed when conditions above the vaporization curve were reached. The temperature increase has two macroscopic effects on the spray geometry: at the nozzle exit the liquid flash boiling strongly enlarges the spray angle, at a certain distance from the nozzle the air entrainment collapses the spray. Raising the fuel temperature up to flash boiling conditions causes a significant decrease of the average droplet size.

Different laser based techniques were applied to investigate the effect of gas density on the penetration of a Diesel Spray and the entrainment of the surrounding air. The experiments were conducted in a constant volume chamber under quiescent conditions. Gas density was varied in a wide range (from 1.17 kg/m3 to 40 kg/m3) while keeping temperature constant at ambient conditions. Spray penetration was measured by different techniques: Laser Doppler Velocimetry (LDV), Laser Beam Extinction (LBE) and Laser Sheet Visualisation (LSV). The results were compared to estimate the level of agreement among the techniques. A comparison with existing penetration models was also performed and an empirical law is proposed to better correlate the results. The two-dimensional gas velocity field generated by the spray was measured by LDV and compared to PIV results evidencing different peculiarities of the two techniques in describing the structure of the flow field.