The Effects of Horizontal Mounting Position of Atomizer in a Confined Tube to Spray Angles

Sprays released from a nozzle mounted in a horizontal tube have many engineering applications. An important characteristic of a spray is the spray angle, which is formed by two straight lines drawn from the discharge orifice of the spray nozzle. An experiment has been carried out to study the effect of the horizontal mounting position of the atomizer to the spray angle. To investigate the variations in spray angle, water was sprayed from a nozzle which was mounted on the centerline of a horizontal clear Perspex tube. The experiment was carried out using four different discharge pressures for the nozzle, while air flowed inside the tube at a constant velocity of 6 m/s. With the use of a color video camera, the image of the spray was captured and analyzed prior to the measurement of spray angle. The experiment was repeated by shifting the spray nozzle horizontal position along the tube centerline. From the experiment, it was found that the farther downstream the nozzle was mounted with respect to the tube inlet, the wider the spray angle became. In addition, the increase of spray angle was more significant for the case of nozzles with higher nominal spray angles.