ENERGY APPROACH TO ESTIMATING THE QUALITY OF THE SPRAY GENERATED BY A MODEL PNEUMATIC ATOMIZER

The efficiency of fluid atomization by an atomizer is studied as a function of the spray energy. The dependence of the maximum values of energy on the fluid flow rate is analyzed. A linear dependence is obtained for flow rates smaller than 80 g/s, which testifies to a high efficiency of fluid atomization. For flow rates greater than 80 g/s, the droplet energy is seen to decrease drastically, leading to an increase in the spray droplet size, which shows that the atomization quality is deteriorated. This behavior is observed in all regimes considered in the study.