Assessment of planar liquid-laser-induced fluorescence measurements for spray mass distributions of like-doublet injectors

The planar liquid-laser-induced fluorescence (PLLIF) technique has been known to be a useful tool for the measurement of the spray mass distributions for various spray injectors because it can obtain two-dimensional images with high spatial resolutions without any intrusion on the spray field. In the cases of dense sprays, however, it has been known that the extinctions of the incident laser beam or fluorescence signal and the secondary emission can cause errors in quantifying the spray mass distributions. Since a like-doublet injector, which is commonly used in liquid rocket engines, has a locally concentrated spray zone at the spray centre, we investigated the applicability of the PLLIF technique for this injector. From the experimental results, we found out that the extinctions of the incident laser beam and fluorescence signal are not significant because the concentrated spray zone is narrow. Also, we found out an optimal incident laser power which can avoid a nonlinear increase of fluorescence signal at the spray centre as well as obtain a high signal-to-noise ratio, and we measured the spray mass concentration of the like-doublet injector spray using the optimal laser power. In order to assess the accuracy of the PLLIF data, we converted the spray mass concentration into the mass flux distribution and compared it with the data obtained by a mechanical patternator and phase Doppler particle analyser. From the result that the PLLIF data showed good agreement with those of the mechanical patternator, we concluded that the PLLIF technique can be successfully applied to measuring the mass distributions of the like-doublet injectors.