The cavitation flow and spray characteristics of gasoline-diesel blends in the nozzle of a high-pressure common-rail injector

In compression-ignition engines, gasoline-diesel blends have been widely concerned for its potential to reach 50% thermal efficiency and ultra-low emissions. Due to physical property difference between the two fuels, the spray atomization characteristics of the blended fuels are different from that of a single fuel, and the cavitation flow characteristics of the blends in the high-pressure nozzle and their impact on the spray are not well un-derstood. In this paper, the visualization of cavitation flow and spray characteristics of five different proportion blended fuels (D100G0, D80G20, D60G40, D40G60, D20G80) was carried out. The influence of fuel properties corresponding to the gasoline-diesel mixing ratio on the initial generation of vortex-induced cavitation, the development of transient cavitation flow process and the injection rate and spray characteristics were studied respectively. For the tapered orifice nozzle, string cavitation is captured mainly concentrating in the needle opening initial period and closing end period, which is the main factor of spray instability and fluctuations. At the injection starting, the addition of gasoline into the diesel fuel resulted in a significant increase in string cavitation strength and larger injection rate compared to the pure diesel, even if the percentage of gasoline added is small. However, the different gasoline addition ratios have little effect on the maximum intensity of string cavitation and the duration of string cavitation in the nozzle. Accordingly, the addition of gasoline increased the overall spray cone angle and spray fluctuations throughout the injection process. Meanwhile, as the injection volume increased, the injection rate curve in the initial process is flat at first and then become steep which was precisely related to the cavitation of the vortex line in the nozzle. The findings of this paper are important guidelines for the determination of fuel injection strategies and spray analysis of gasoline-diesel blends for compression-ignition engines.