Gas expansions are extensively employed to generate high speed flows that replicate certain conditions relevant to high speed flight, as well as in fundamental research in the fields of chemical kinetics and energy transfer. Pulsed gas expansions result in reduced mass flow rates, and thus lower pumping speed requirements and inexpensive operation. Fast and consistent gas injection into these instruments is a critical factor in the reliability of pulsed expansions, since the timing of the flow is often matched to pulsed lasers and detectors. Gas injection into pulsed gas expansions is commonly performed via specialized commercial solenoid valves. However, the use of standard automobile fuel injectors for these applications has been previously reported, providing a more economical and reliable alternative to specialized valves. This work reports on the measurement of high performance fuel injector opening times under different conditions of gas pressure and driver voltage. Opening times obtained for the fuel injectors are compared with those found for a Parker Series 9 Pulse Valve, a commercially available solenoid pulse valve. The method developed for estimating the fuel injector’s opening time relies on a recently developed data collection program written in LabView program and an analysis script written in MATLAB.

Characterization of high-performance fuel injectors for pulsed gas expansions

255th National Meeting (2018)

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