Yesterday I finished the first part of the setup i.e. the feed system: from the air supply to the water tank to the injector. Here are some pictures:
The air supply in the Aerodynamics lab is 10 bar. The gas passes a manual valve, a check valve, a relief valve set just above 10 bar and a regulator with a range of 1-10 bar. This is what you can see on the main wood panel. On its other side, the water tank is pressurized by the regulated air and the liquid goes towards the injector. It first passes through a pressure transducer and a solenoid valve connected to the electronic box. This consists of a small voltage divider and a data acquisition board (NI 6211). The pressure is displayed and the valve is controlled by the control panel made in LabView.
After the safety check is passed, next week, Prof. Ferry Schrijer will help me with the main part of this project i.e. measuring the size of the droplets. Since the jet velocity is 30 m/s and the size of the droplets is expected to be around 50 μm, the taken pictures must be completely frozen in order to collect relevant data. This cannot be done by the shutter of the high speed camera as it is too slow, but instead, a light source will be used for a shorter period (in the order of ns). More about the equipment will follow in a later post.
Vlad Petrescu 