Quantitative imaging of a non-combusting diesel spray using structured laser illumination planar imaging

Due to its transient nature, high atomization process, and rapid generation of fine evaporating droplets, diesel sprays have been, and still remain, one of the most challenging sprays to be fully analyzed and understood by means of non-intrusive diagnostics. The main limitation of laser techniques for quantitative measurements of diesel sprays concerns the detection of the multiple light scattering resulting from the high optical density of such a scattering medium. A second limitation is the extinction of the incident laser radiation as it crosses the spray, as well as the attenuation of the signal which is to be detected. All these issues have strongly motivated, during the past decade, the use of X-ray instead of visible light for dense spray diagnostics. However, we demonstrate in this paper that based on an affordable Nd:YAG laser system, structured laser illumination planar imaging (SLIPI) can provide accurate quantitative description of a non-reacting diesel spray injected at 1,100 bar within a room temperature vessel pressurized at 18.6 bar. The technique is used at λ = 355 nm excitation wavelength with 1.0 mol% TMPD dye concentration, for simultaneous LIF/Mie imaging. Furthermore, a novel dual-SLIPI configuration is tested with Mie scattering detection only. The results confirm that a mapping of both the droplet Sauter mean diameter and extinction coefficient can be obtained by such complementary approaches. These new insights are provided in this article at late times after injection start. It is demonstrated that the application of SLIPI to diesel sprays provides valuable quantitative information which was not previously accessible.