Drop Size Distributions in Heavy Fuel Oil Sprays

摘要

Experimental data from an earlier study were used to determine the applicability of different distribution functions to describe the size distribution of droplets in a heavy fuel oil spray. The data were for a swirl pressure jet nozzle, and a statistical test was used as a criterion for the goodness-of-fit. When the log-normal distribution function was applied to the experimental data, the logarithmic mean size of the droplets was found to decrease with increasing oil preheat temperature and with increasing injection pressure. However, the shape of the distribution was found to remain independent of the input conditions, i.e., the logarithmic standard deviation was approximately constant 1.76 in all tests. A visually very satisfactory fit with the experimental data was obtained in all tests, but the values of the test statistic were high, indicating that the log-normal distribution function was not appropriate.