This paper presents the results of experimental and theoretical studies of an internally mixed liquid injector. In this type of injector atomization is attained by injecting a small amount of air into a liquid stream within the injector. The results presented in this paper suggest that the investigated injector could be used to control the flow rate and spray characteristics, e.g., droplet size and spray penetration, and hence, a "controlled" version of the investigated injector may find applications in modern gas turbine engines. This paper also describes the development and predictions of a heuristic model that depicts the two-phase flow inside an internally mixed atomizer. The developed model assumes that the formation of liquid drops, due to the interaction between the air and liquid flows, occurs inside the injector. Basic conservation equations, along with appropriate boundary conditions, are used to model the two-phase air-liquid flow inside the injector. A statistically distributed Weber number criterion is used to estimate the sizes of the droplets being produced in the process. The liquid flow rates and the droplet sizes predicted by the model are compared with the experimental data and they are found to be in fair agreement with each other, suggesting that the model properly describes the physics of the two-phase flow within the injector.
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