1. Tommy Harris
Nicholas Chua
Vu Danh
Ryan Fontenot
Heath Headley
Advised by: Dr. Jiang

2. Team Name and Roles
• Team FIDDLE (fuel injection design and
development leading engineers)
• Ryan Fontenot – Team Leader
• Nicholas Chua – Finance
• Tommy Harris – Communications
• Vu Danh – Construction
• Heath Headley - Testing

3. To be covered
• Fuel Injection Basics
• Objectives of Project
• Objective Execution
• Equations and Theory
• Experiment Plan/ Results

4. What is Fuel Injection?

5. Ways to Improve
• Maximize surface production
• Minimized droplet coalescence
• Minimized gas expense

6. Flow-Blurring Fuel Injection
• Research done by Dr. Alfonso Gañán-Calvo
• Chair of fluid mechanics at the University of Seville
• Higher efficiency
• Independent of viscosity

7. How Does It Work?
• Takes advantage of turbulent air
currents
• Occurs at certain height to diameter
ratio
•
H
D
≤0.25

8. Potential Application
• Turbines
• Viscous fuel compatibility

9. Goals
• Design unique flow-focusing to flow-blurring fuel
injector using Solidworks
• 3-D print design
• Install leak-proof and reliable fuel and air
connections
• Set up test lab with all necessary equipment
• Outline experiment plan for relating spray
characteristics to ALR and H/D ratio

10. Goals
• Conduct experiments and collect desired data
• Organize data into neat and presentable form

11. Criteria
• Offset distance must be adjustable
• Fuel feed tube diameter must be either adjustable or
interchangeable
• Injector nozzle must attach to some sort of holder
• All parts must be 3-D printable
• Exit orifice diameter must equal fuel feed tube
diameter

12. Constraints
• Material Constraints
• Limited to 3-D printable plastic like PLA or ABS
• Size Constraints
• Must be as small as practicable
• Compatible with a 1/16” NPT compression fitting
• Compatible with a 3/8” NPT air hose adapter

13. Constraints
• Financial Constraints
• budget limit of $500
• Time Constraints
• 13 weeks from start to finish

14. First Design

15. Final Design
Fuel Inlet
Air Inlet
Air Chamber
Exit Orifice

16. Plastic Prototype
Injector
Holder
Air
Chamber
Detachable
Fuel
Nozzles

17. Plastic Prototype

18. Setting the Offset Distance
• Pitch: 1.5 mm/turn
• The following table how much to turn nozzle for
testing
H/D H (mm) Turns
0.09375 0.1875 (1/8)
0.1875 0.375 (1/4)
0.28125 0.5625 (3/8)
0.375 0.75 (1/2)

19. Gas to liquid mass Ratio (GLR)
• GLR =
Mass flow rate of air
Mass flow rate of liquid
• High GLR → small droplet size and quick
• Vaporization (for H/D ≤ 0.25)

20. Water Supply
• Cole-Parmer Pump
• Flow rate can be set to an
exact value
• Controls flow rate to a
minimum of 0.6 ml/min

21. Air Supply
• Craftsmen Air
Compressor
• 125 PSI

22. Flow Meter
• Key Instruments (Ki) variable
area flow meter
• Measures from 1-10 SCFM

23. Testing Set Up

24. Test Procedures
• Set offset distance for the fuel injector
• Set the GLR for testing
• Run the fuel injector and photograph for
documentation
• Reiterate runs at differing GLR settings
• Change the offset distance and repeat steps

25. Flow-Blurring

26. Flow-Focusing

27. Data Analysis

28. Conclusions
• Flow-blurring atomization produces a smaller angle of spray
• This implies smaller droplet size
• Maximize surface production
• Flow-blurring enhances atomization

29. Recommendations
• Alternate design to manufacture with metallic
material
• Manufacture injector with transparent material
• Test with high speed camera

30. Questions??