Flow and spray characteristics of a gas–liquid pintle injector under backpressure environment

Both the flow and spray characteristics of a gas–liquid pintle injector element under the backpressure environment were investigated experimentally and numerically. The cold atomization tests were conducted with the backpressure range from 0.50 to 1.54 MPa. Both the interaction process between gas film and liquid jets and the detail distribution of the spray were obtained by the verified volume of fluid to discrete phase model. Results showed that there is a local high-pressure zone at the root of the liquid jets resulted by the collision of gas film and liquid jet. A semi-empirical model for predicting the discharge coefficient of the orifices is proposed considering the effect of local high-pressure zones based on the experiments. It was found that the discharge coefficient is mainly affected by the local momentum ratio (LMR) and ambient pressure. The discharge coefficient increases with the increase in LMR and ambient pressure. Before the primary breakup occurs, the liquid jets deform from rectangle jets to bow-shaped liquid films under the effect of the gas film. Then, both the gas and liquid mix in the range included by the gas passed by the windward surface and side of liquid jets. The droplet size is larger at the edges of the spray and the Sauter mean diameter (SMD) is beyond 100 μm. On the contrary, it is relatively small and uniform at the spray central, and the corresponding SMD is about 50 μm.