Experiments in Fluids (2005) 39: 977994 DOI 10.

1007/s00348-005-0026-4

R EA SE A RC H AR T IC L E

J. B. Blaisot J. Yon

Droplet size and morphology characterization for dense sprays by image processing: application to the Diesel spray

Received: 14 June 2004 / Revised: 3 March 2005 / Accepted: 7 July 2005 / Published online: 19 October 2005 Springer-Verlag 2005

Abstract Up to now, measurement of drop size remains dicult in dense sprays such as those encountered in Diesel applications. Commonly used diagnostics are often limited due to multi-scattering eects, high drop velocity and concentration and also nonspherical shapes. The advantage of image-based techniques on the others is its ability to describe the shape of liquid particles that are not fully atomized or relaxed. In the present study, a model is developed to correct the main drawbacks of imaging. It permits to dene criteria for the correction of the apparent size of an unfocused drop and to determine a measurement volume independent of the drop size. This considerably reduces the over-estimation of large drops in the drop size distribution. Drop shapes are also characterized by four morphological parameters. The image-based granulometer is satisfactorily compared to a PDPA and a diraction-based granulometer for measurements on an ultrasonic spray. Then, the new granulometer is applied to a diesel spray. One of the results of the analysis is that even if mean drop size distributions are stable 30 mm downstream from the nozzle outlet, the shape of the drops is still evolving towards the spherical shape. The atomization process is thus not totally established at this position in opposition to what can be deduced from the drop size distribution alone.

1 Introduction
The pollutant emissions caused by combustion engines represent an important problem for the environment. Transport activity is considered by international

J. B. Blaisot (&) J. Yon UMR CNRS 6614CORIA, Laboratoire de Thermodynamique, Universite et INSA de Rouen, 76801 Saint Etienne du Rouvray, France E-mail: jean-bernard.blaisot@coria.fr

organizations such as International Programs Center (IPC), to be responsible for more than 20% of the greenhouse gas emissions. In order to reduce the pollutant gas emissions of cars, car manufacturers have to develop new engines that are compliant with more and more restrictive pollution regulation laws. Injection systems able to produce very ne sprays represent one development axis that has been followed over the last two decades to reduce pollutant emissions, particularly concerning Diesel injection. The very ne sprays are obtained by increasing the injection pressures in common rail systems, decreasing the nozzle hole diameters and reducing the injectionduration time. However, because of the high optical density of the Diesel sprays, it is not possible to identify either large liquid blobs that are not totally atomized or dense spray regions composed of very ne droplets. The optical density makes the diagnostics of the Diesel spray very dicult. The most commonly used diagnostics for Diesel spray analysis are diraction-based granulometer and Phase Doppler Particle Analyzer (PDPA). Hardalupas (1992) and Guerrassi and Champoussin (1995) used a PDPA measurement and observed, in an atmospheric environment, a decrease of the droplet Sauter mean diameter (SMD) with the increase of the radial distance from the axis of injection. A completely dierent result was obtained by Gulder and Smallwood (1999) who used a dif fraction granulometer to analyze the Diesel spray and observed a radial increase of the SMD. This contradiction clearly shows that the results must be carefully interpreted. Diraction measurement and PDPA are suspected to be unsuited to dense sprays, due to the multi-scattering eect. Another important limitation of these techniques concerns the droplet sphericity hypothesis on which they rely. We can notice that other drop size measurement techniques are under development such as holography (Buraga et al. 2000), planar laser scattering (Domann and Hardalupas 2000), out of focus laser scattering imaging (Calabria and Massoli 2001) and speckle light scattering

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(Ineichen 2003). Nevertheless these diagnostics are not yet ready to analyze dense industrial sprays such as Diesel sprays. Image-based granulometry is another emerging technique available to analyze the sprays, as can be seen in the recent review of Lee and Kim (2003). The principal interest of this technique resides in its ability to quantitatively analyze the liquid element morphology. This is a good indicator of the level of droplet atomization. Up to now, the main limitation of these diagnostics is the out-of-focus phenomenon (Koh et al. 2001). Indeed, on an image, an unfocused droplet seems to be larger than a focused one of the same size. Therefore, accounting for unfocused droplets implies an overestimation of the biggest diameters in the droplet size distributions. There are dierent ways to avoid this phenomenon. One of these consists in dening a focus criteria in order to reject all unfocused droplets. This has been proposed by different authors such as Fantini et al. (1990), Lecuona et al. (2000), Koh et al. (2001), Lee and Kim (2003) and Kim and Kim (1994). This method has two drawbacks. Firstly, the droplet rejection rate is high, so numerous pictures of the sprays have to be analyzed in order to construct smooth droplet size distributions. The second limitation is linked to the fact that small droplets are more concerned by the out-offocus phenomenon than bigger ones, resulting in an overestimation of the biggest droplets. To overcome this point, Hay et al. (1998) used a gradient criterion to dene a depth of eld independent of the drop diameters. Nevertheless, this criterion was based on an empirical relationship. The blurring eect on unfocused droplet images has to be taken into account in order to correct the measurement of the droplet diameter. Blaisot and Ledoux (1998) and Malot and Blaisot (2000) proposed

an imaging model based on the estimation of the point spread function (PSF) to carry out such correction for the measurement of the diameter of well-located liquid drops. However, when applied to spatially dispersed sprays, this model suer from the same limitation indicated above: the population of big drops is overestimated. We propose in the present paper an improvement of the PSF model in order to evaluate the droplet focusing. The optical PSF width is usually considered as the resolution limit for the recording device (lm or camera). This is not the case in the present application where the PSF is spatially resolved by the CCD camera (more than 10 pixels over the PSF width). Thus the PSF width is evaluated through the analysis of the gray-level prole at the outline of the drop image. As the PSF width is related to the droplet location relative to the focusing plane, the selection of droplet image characterized by a PSF width below a chosen maximum value is used to delimit the measurement volume along the depth from focus direction. The rst part of this paper consists in the presentation of the improved model of the droplet image formation. The dierent steps of the image processing for the extraction of the image parameters necessary to the measurement of the droplet diameter, the focusing and the morphological characterization of the droplets is presented. Next, the calibration process of the model with our optical setup is presented. Drop size measurements on a calibrated ultrasonic spray are compared to PDPA and diraction-based granulometers. The paper ends with the application of this new size and morphology analyzer to a Diesel spray. It is found that the shape analysis is relevant for the characterization of the atomization process through the information it adds to the drop size distribution.

Fig. 1 Denition of optical axes in object and image planes

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2 Image modeling
In the case of an imaging system using a noncoherent light source, the illumination distribution in the image plane i(x, y) can be described by the convolution product of the irradiance distribution in the object plane o(x, y) and the PSF of the imaging system s(x, y) (Goodman 1968): ix; y ox0 ; y 0  sx; y: 1

The coordinates (x, y) and (x, y) are associated to the object plane and the image plane, respectively (see Fig. 1). The axis z, perpendicular to the planes (x, y) and (x, y), is the optical axis of the imaging setup. The PSF can be dened as the diraction image of an innitesimally small source point. This image would be merely a point under geometric optics. In order to compute the convolution product in the image plane, we replace the object function o(x,y) by its geometric image og(x,y), deduced from the object function simply by a homothetic transformation of ratio equal to the lateral magnication c of the imaging set-up.

minimum grey level are considered in the image analysis procedure as explained below. In practice, the parameter s is introduced to adapt the model to the experiment. Indeed, the theoretical contrast of the images is calibrated to the experimental ones through the determination of this parameter. The value of s depends on the aperture of the optical setup and on the object diameter too, but the way s is related to the object size greatly depends on the eective aperture. The small numerical aperture of the optical setup used in this work leads to small values of s. As a consequence, this parameter has been considered not to depend on the object size in the remainder without noticeable loss in accuracy.

2.2 Point spread function (PSF) For a diraction-limited optical system of circular aperture under monochromatic illumination, the PSF is given by sdl r; k J1 ak r ak r2 ;

2.1 Object modeling The imaging set-up is in a backlight conguration and the objects under consideration are droplets of liquid illuminated by a white, noncoherent light source. Only opaque or slightly transmitting objects are considered. The amount of transmitted light is characterized by the contrast coecient s. The irradiance distribution in the object plane, the object function, be expressed p can thus in cylindrical coordinates r x2 y 2 by:   r ; 2 og x; y og r 1 1 sP 2ai where ai=c ao is the radius of the geometric image, ao being the object radius and P~ is the rectangle funcr tion: & 1 for j~j \ 0:5; r P~ r 0 otherwise: As indicated in the introduction, the principle of the image analysis is based on the resolution of the PSF by the camera. Such condition is obtained here by a relatively small numerical aperture for the optical setup (NA.0.1). In this case, only the forward scattered light near the axis direction contributes to the image and only a very small part of the o-axis light gets into the imaging system. Images of liquid droplets or opaque discs are thus very similar in this case except in the center of the droplet image where the refracted component of the light near the axis leads to a brighter spot in the center (Hovenac 1986). This dierence is not restrictive here as only the outline of the image prole and the

where ak is a scale parameter depending on the wavelength k. When considering noncoherent polychromatic light, the PSF can be modeled by a Gaussian shape (Pentland 1987) as the result of the contribution of numerous functions sdl(r;k) for the various wavelengths:   2r2 sr s0 exp 2 ; 3 v where v is the PSF half-width and s0 is a normalization constant. The PSF changes with the position of the droplet in the object space. Indeed, the PSF width strongly changes with the location of the object along the optical axis: the more unfocused the object, the larger the PSF and the more blurred the image. Nevertheless, it is supposed that v does not depend on the image plane coordinates (x, y), i.e., there is no spatial variation of the optical aberrations of the imaging device in the plane (x, y). Finally, it will be supposed in the following that the PSF half-width v is only a function of z. 2.3 Image computation Introducing Eqs. 2 and 3 in Eq. 1 yields 0 0q11 Z1 Z n2 g2 @1 1 sP@ AA ix; y 2ai
1

o! 2n 2 2 dndg: 4 exp 2 x n y g v

Equation 4 is normalized and written in circular coordinates:

980

~ r 1 21 sexp~2 i~ r

Z
0

~ a

qexpq2 I0 2~qdq; r

5 6

Cmax

1s : 1s

~max 1; ~min ~ 1 1 s 1 exp~2 ; i i0 a i

where ~ is r p the nondimensional radial coordinate ~ r p a 2r=v p 2 y 2 =v; ~ is the nondimensional droplet 2x radius ~ 2ai =v and I0 is the modied Bessel function a of the rst kind. A low value for ~ corresponds to a small object width a compare to the PSF width. A small focused object or a larger unfocused object can thus have the same value for ~: Several theoretical image proles are shown in a Fig. 2a. The width of the image prole obviously increases when the object diameter increases. For low ~; a the image prole presents a V-shape and when ~ ina creases it turns to a U-shape. For a given value of ~; the a height of the prole is controlled by the parameter s: the lower s, the higher the prole. The minimum level at the image center ~min ~ i i0 (Eq. 6) decreases with ~ and a reaches the limiting value ~min s when ~ is large enough i a ~ 2:5; s 0; 0:2 on Fig:2a: On the other hand, for a lower values of ~; the minimum level varies between s a and 1.

For completely opaque objects (s=0), this yields Cmax=1 and for s=0.2, it gives Cmax=2/3 (see Fig. 3a). Eq. 8 is used to determine the experimental value of s by measuring the biggest value for the contrast. As explained before, it is assumed here that s does not depend on the droplet diameter. A reference contrast dened as the contrast for a perfectly opaque object is obtained writing s=0 in Eq. 7: Cs 0 C0 1 exp~2 a : 1 exp~2 a 9

For an object of contrast coecient s 0, the contrast can be expressed as a function of s and C0 by eliminating exp~2 between Eqs. 7 and 9: a C C0 1 s ; 1 C0 s 10

thus the normalized contrast C0 can be expressed as a function of s and C: C0 C; s C : 1 s1 C C 11

2.4 Image parameters The image parameters used to compare theoretical and experimental image proles are now introduced. A sketch for the denition of these parameters is presented in Fig. 2b. The image contrast C, dened by Eq. 7, is a nondimensional parameter bounded between 0 and 1. C ~max ~min 1 ~min i i i 1 s1 exp~2 a : ~max ~min 1 ~min 2 1 s1 exp~2 a i i i 7

~ The variation of C versus a is shown in Fig. 3a for s=0 and 0.2. The contrast increases monotonously with ~ and reaches the maximum Cmax for ~&2:4: As ~min a a i tends to be s when ~ increases (see Eq. 6), the limiting a value for the contrast is:

The maximum normalized contrast C0,max=1 is obtained for C=Cmax in Eq. 11. In the following, the normalized contrast C0 is used in place of C to express relations without any dependence on s. A second image parameter is used to describe the grey level prole: it is the image half-width ~l determined at a r relative level l, (0<l<1). The absolute reference level ~ref i corresponding to a given relative level l is dened by Eq. 12 where h ~max ~min is the height of the image i i prole. ~ref l ~min lh: i i 12

The image half-width ~l is then dened implicitly by: r ~ rl ~ref l: i i~ 13

i

Fig. 2 Theoretical image prole: a proles for dierent values of the nondimensional object radius ~ and of the a contrast coecient s. lled square: ~ 1:12; s 0:0; lled a triangle: ~ 1:5; s 0:0; open a triangle: ~ 1:5; s 0:2; Filled a diamond: ~ 2:5; s 0:0; open a diamond: ~ 2:5; s 0:2; a b denition of the relative levels

1 0,8 0,6

b imax

iref l.h

rl

i
0,4
imin

0,2 0 -4 -2 0 ~ 2 4 0 0

981 Fig. 3 Image parameters versus nondimensional object radius ~: a a Contrast C. lledsquare: s=0; lled triangle: s=0.2. b Halfwidth ~l : lled square: l=0.25; r lled triangle: l=0.61; lled diamond: l=0.77

1 0,8 0,6

b 5
4 3

0,4 0,2 0 0 1 2 ~ 3 4

rl
2 1 0 0 1 2 ~ 3 4

As the reference level is dened relative to the image prole height, it can be easily shown from Eq. 14 that ~l r does not depend on s: exp~l r 1 l Z
0 2

2.5 Droplet diameter estimation It is assumed now that s is known (s is calculated for the biggest unblurred droplet) and that l is xed to a given value. So, for xed values of s and l, C0 and ~l are r functions of ~ only (Eqs. 9 and 14). In this set of paraa metric equations, the parameter ~ can be eliminated, a yielding the direct relation between C0 and ~l : No loss of r generality occurs when dividing ~l by ~ and taking the r a inverse of the result. The ratio obtained a/rl represents the ratio of the object width to the measured image width. The variation of a/rl versus C0 is shown in Fig. 4 for l=0.25, 0.61 and 0.77. The object to image width ratio increases with the contrast except for the curve l=0.25 presenting a maximum around C0=0.76. The starting and ending points of the curves are (0,0) and (1,1) for (C0,a/rl), whatever the relative level l. Images with a very low contrast correspond to unfocused objects or very small focused objects, i.e., objects of width much smaller than the PSF width ~ 0: In such a case a the, image prole is at and spreads over a large area, resulting in a very small value of a/rl so C0 ; a=rl 0; 0: The ending point of the curves ! (C0,a/rl)=(1,1) is reached for ~ 1: The U-shape a ! image proles then tend to the square shape of the object prole. It is noticeable that among the strictly increasing curves, the curve for l=0.61 is the one that has the largest dynamics for the values of a/rl. For relative levels lower than 0.61, the curve a/rl=f(C0) presents a shing rod shape as shown in Fig. 4 for l=0.25. This explains the fact that the classical mid level (l=0.5) was not used here to measure the image width. For practical applications, the relation a/rl=f(C0) is tted by a polynomial of an order up to 4: a 2 3 4 pl C0 a0 a1 C0 a2 C0 a3 C0 a4 C0 : 15 rl The polynomial coecients ak, {k=0.4} are functions of l. The size of the object is estimated from the measurement of the parameters rl,meas and Cmeas and through Eqs. 11 and 15: aest rl;meas pl C0 Cmeas ; s; 16

~ a

q expq2 I0 2~l qdq r 14 q expq dq:

2

0 ~ a

The half-width for relative levels l=0.25, 0.61 and 0.77 are used to characterize the image prole. The variation of ~l for these three levels is shown in r Fig. 3b. When ~ is large enough ~ > 1:5; the calcua a lated radius ~l increases linearly with the object width r and for ~ 0; ~l tends to be the half-width of the a ! r PSF at the relative level 1 l by denition of the image width. Indeed, when ~ 0; the convolution a ! product (Eq. 1) becomes an identity as o(x, y) can be considered in this case as a Dirac function. The result is that the image is very similar to the PSF in such a case. For l=0.61, ~l remains always slightly larger r than ~: a

1,5

a/rl
0,5 0 0

0,2

0,4

0,6

0,8

C0
Fig. 4 Variation of a/rl versus normalized contrast C0 for dierent relative levels of thresholding l. lled square: l =0.25; lled triangle: l=0.61; it lled diamond: l=0.77

whereas classical approaches consider focused objects only, corresponding to Cmeas . Cmax, Eq. 16 is used to express the radius of unfocused objects, corrected from

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the out-of-focus eect. The depth of eld of the droplet sizing setup is thus increased. The limiting parameter is given by the minimum contrast Cmin. The minimum contrast measurable with a given optical setup depends on the threshold used to detect the droplet images. One should note that images are constituted of black elements over a white background so that negative transition are considered and that the threshold level must be lower than the white background level. This threshold level must be chosen suciently low to prevent detection of false image (i.e., noise) but also suciently high in order to detect the maximum number of unfocused and small droplet images. The tradeo leads to Cmin . 0.1 in our case. The minimum diameter measurable with this technique is dened by xing a minimum number of pixel per droplet. We xed this number to NPixmin=10 pixels for the lowest relative level l=0.25 which represents the smallest droplet image area to be considered. The minimum diameter is thus deduced from Eq. 16: r 4NPixmin dmin p0:25 C0 Cmin ; s : 17 pR2 The minimum contrast measurable induces also a maximum value for v for a given object size a. According to Fig. 3a, Cmin . 0.1 is obtained for ~min 0:5: It comes from the denition of ~ : a a vmax vCmin 0:1 2:8a: 18

~ l=0.77 and l=0.25 does not varies strongly with a and seems to reach a limit value for ~ > 1:5: Let us dene the a nondimensional half-width dierence D~ by Eq. 19: r D~ ~0:77 ~0:25 : r r r 19

It can be observed in Fig. 5 that D~ linearly increases r with the contrast C0. The minimum value is 0.676 for C0=0, and the maximum is 1.021 for C0=0.988. As for the estimation of the droplet diameter, the relation between D~ and C0 r is tted by a polynomial of order 3:
2 3 D~ pr C0 b0 b1 C0 b2 C0 b3 C0 : r

20

Knowing the coecient s, the PSF half-width can be estimated from the measured parameters Drmeas and Cmeas and Eqs. 11 and 20: vest Drmeas =pr C0 Cmeas ; s: 21

An estimation of v is now available for each measurable droplet, v being associated to the droplet location along the optical axis. v is an increasing function of the distance of the drop from the focus plane, so a criterion independent of the droplet diameter can thus be dened to take into account only the droplets located in a given volume: vest\vmax : This is illustrated in the Sect. 4. 22

As the PSF width v increases with the distance z from the focus plane, this implies that the biggest droplets are measurable over a larger domain of space than the smallest ones. Therefore, if all the measurable droplets are counted in the drop size distribution, the population of the smallest droplets will be underestimated. To overcome this problem, a correction of the droplet counting based on the estimation of the droplet focusing is proposed hereafter. 2.6 Droplet focusing estimation An estimation of the droplet focusing can be obtained through the determination of the PSF half-width v as it is directly related to the position of the droplet in the object space along the optical axis (z). The grey level gradient on the outline of the image is strongly related to the PSF width, due to the convolution product. In fact, when the object width is a lot bigger than the PSF width ~ ) 1; the width of the image outline is directly linked a to the PSF width. In these particular conditions, ~ ) 1; the gradient criteria can be used to discriminate a focused and unfocused droplets. For smaller or moreblurred droplets, gradient criteria are not eectual anymore. So, instead of calculating the grey level gradient at the outline of the image, the imaging model is used to link the dierence between image widths at two dierent levels l1 and l2 and the PSF half-width. It can be seen on Fig. 3b that the dierence between half-widths ~l for r

3 Image analysis
The analysis is a 3-stage process. The rst stage corresponds to a global image pre-processing called normalization. The second stage consists in detecting and separating the dierent droplets on the pictures. The last stage consists in applying the imaging model to each detected droplet in order to extract the droplet characteristics. All the computations needed for the processing

1 0,8

0,6 0,4 0,2 0 0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1

C0
Fig. 5 Variation of D~ r contrast C0 p 2r0:77 r0:25 =v versus normalized

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Fig. 6 Normalization eect: Example of an ultrasonic spray image before a and after b normalization

of the images have been done on a standard personal computer using C programming language. 3.1 Illumination normalization In the imaging model, a uniform background image is considered. In real applications, the light distribution in the background of a backlight conguration setup is rarely uniform. The reason is that the light source, or more rarely the CCD camera response, are not spatially homogeneous. As black over white images are considered and as the response of the CCD camera to the input light is linear, a normalized image, expressed by Eq. 23, can be computed Pn i; j bPnorm P i; j PO i; j ; PB i; j PO i; j 23

If there is no clear region in the image, a global technique based on the grey level histogram of the image is used. Histograms of back-lighted spray pictures generally present one or two principal modes. The mode corresponding to the higher grey level is relative to the background pixels. The most-populated grey level Lpeak in the background is expected to be statistically robust. Thus, b is given by the ratio Lpeak(PB)/Lpeak(P). 3.2 The droplet detection To characterize the droplets, each droplet is individually localized on the pictures and is surrounded by a mask. This is usually done by a classic threshold applied to the picture at a given level Lth. The threshold level Lth determines the minimum contrast Cmin of the droplet detected by this method. This is a correct approach if all the droplet images to be analyzed have a higher contrast than Cmin. In fact, the smaller the droplet or the more distant from the focus plane the droplet is, the more blurred the image of the droplet as predicted by the model. The smallest or most unfocused droplets have a low contrast and can be lost by the classic thresholding technique. To increase the sensitivity of the detection, a second thresholding technique based on wavelet transform has been developed. This second technique allows the detection of grey level local variations that indicates the presence of a droplet image. The wavelet transform can be seen as a spectral analysis, like the Fouriers transform, but spatially localized. The wavelet transform of a function is the result of the linear convolution of this function with a particular function called a wavelet (Eq. 24). Z WW;f t; q f XWt;q XdX: 24 The function f to be analyzed represents here the normalized grey level picture: f(X)=Pn(i, j) (X=(i, j) is the pixel position).

where 0<b<1, P(i, j) is the grey level of pixel (i,j), PB(i, j) is the grey level of the background image (obtained without any object in the view eld) and PO(i, j) corresponds to the noise level of the grabbing setup and is obtained with the camera objective closed (the obscurity image). Pnorm is the mean background level of the normalized image. The eect of the normalization is illustrated on Fig. 6. The objects are more easily identied from the background after normalization. The coecient b is used to correct the uctuation of the global intensity level in the background when the light source is not temporally stable. A reference level is needed for the uctuation to be corrected. This level is determined in two dierent ways depending on the image to be normalized. If there is a clear region in the pictures where droplets never appear, the mean grey level Lclear of this region is compared to the mean grey level LB determined on the background image for the same region and the correction coecient is given by b=LB/Lclear.

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Fig. 7 Thresholding techniques: a Wavelet image of the normalized image in Fig. 6b. b Wavelet-based two-level image. c classically thresholded image

The wavelet Yt,q is given by:   1 Xt ; q > 0: Wt;q X p W q q

25

The function Y is called the mother wavelet function and is an oscillating function of zero mean and localized in space. This function is dilated and shifted in space as indicated by Eq. 25: the vector t is the shifting parameter and q is the dilatation parameter. The larger q, the lower the spatial frequency analyzed by the wavelet. The choice of the mother wavelet depends on the information to be brought out. To analyze droplet images, the Mexican hat has been chosen: 2 2p Wr p 1 r2 er =2 : 26 3 This function corresponds to the second derivative of a Gaussian function. Thus, the convolution of the grey level image with the wavelet function corresponds to the second derivative of the image, rstly convo-

luted by a Gaussian lter. The second derivative of the ltered grey level function corresponds to the part of the picture where grey level concavity or convexity are found. This is the case for the grey level distribution on the outline of the droplet image. The smaller the width of the grey level variation zone (blurred zone), the higher the absolute value of concavity or convexity. In other words, the second derivative is all the more important since the droplet is well-focused. In order to detect the droplet interface, the parameter q is chosen to be of the order of the width of the blurred droplet interface on the pictures. So, as q is xed, each pixel t = (i, j) of the grey level picture is associated to a wavelet coecient WY,f(t,q), giving a wavelet image as illustrated in Fig. 7a. Negative values of WY,f (t,q) correspond to pixels in a convex grey level zone, typically the external side of the droplet interface. Positive values correspond to the concave zone (i.e., internal side) and nil values to uniform zones of the picture, typically the normalized background. A threshold on the wavelet image is used to localize the droplet interface on the picture when the interface is particularly blurred. The detection of small out-of-focus drops is achieved through the use of only one value for the scale parameter q. In the other case, when a large

985

depth of eld is chosen, several wavelet transforms can be performed with dierent values of q and then combined in order to detect a larger range of drop focusing. The two-level image obtained is then combined to the one obtained with the classical threshold. Examples of wavelet-based and classically thresholded images are shown in Fig. 7b, 7c respectively. The classical threshold technique detects the larger droplets correctly but misses some of the smaller ones. The detection of unfocused droplets is improved by the wavelet-based thresholding and the contribution of this technique is essentially positive as it only adds droplets that would not be detected by the classical technique. The image resulting from the union of the two thresholding techniques is scanned by a recursive labeling algorithm in order to localize individually each identied droplet. A morphological dilatation is then applied to each object (set of connected pixels, i.e., of same label level) to dene a surrounding mask for the calculation of local quantities. 3.3 Droplet analysis and sub-pixel contour extraction Each droplet has to be isolated from the surrounding droplets in order to be individually analyzed. An illustration of this process is shown in Fig. 8. The picture in Fig. 8a corresponds to the box drawn on the picture in Fig. 6b. Figure 8b represents in black, the mask of the droplet studied, in bright grey its dilated surface and in dark grey, the dilated surface of the other droplet masks. A picture corresponding to the droplet studied with its environment but without its neighboring droplets is extracted from the original image (Fig. 8c). A two-level image (Fig. 8d) is then computed by thresholding the local image at level Pref. The threshold level Pref is determined by Eq. 27 Pref Pmin lPmax Pmin ; 27

Cmeas

Pmax Pmin : Pmax Pmin

28

A nonhomogeneous background level can be induced by largely unfocused droplets in front of or behind the measurable droplets. These unfocused droplets diminish the local illumination of the droplet nearer from the focus plane but this is considered by the computation of the local contrast Cmeas. The pixel-contour of the twolevel image (Fig. 8d) is not smooth due to the discretization of the picture, so a sub-pixel edge detection algorithm is used to obtain the contour of the droplet. To do so, the grey level gradient is computed for each pixel of the contour by two Sobel operators giving the rst order derivation of the grey level following the horizontal and vertical directions. The gradient vector is used to reach the real value of the threshold level in a sub pixel coordinate system. This is illustrated in Fig. 9b. 3.4 Droplet size parameters and volume reconstruction The previous section showed the ability of the algorithm to detect droplets and to isolate them and also to obtain the droplet edge description in sub-pixel coordinates. Added to the image contrast Cmeas, three other image parameters are used to characterize the droplet. The generalized radius of the droplet image is based on the area A0.61 inside sub-pixel contour at relative level l=0.61. The denition of this radius is based on the area of a circular shape: r A0:61 : 29 rmeas p When droplets are spherical, Eqs. 16 and 29 lead to the correct estimation of the droplet radius. On the other hand, for nonspherical droplets, Eq. 29 introduce a bias in this estimation. To compensate for this, a volumebased radius rv is dened following the 3D shape estimation of the droplet proposed by (Daves et al. 1993). The volume of the drop is calculated by considering slices of the 2D shape of the image, cut perpendicularly to the principal axis of inertia (see Fig. 10a). For each slice, the elementary volume is dened by the volume of a disc of diameter equal to the width of the slice and of thickness equal to the height of the slice. The droplet

where the minimum grey level Pmin, and the most-populated grey level Pmax which corresponds to the background grey level are obtained from the local grey level histogram (Fig. 9a). The relative level l was dened above in Eq. 12. The local contrast Cmeas of the droplet is also computed from the grey levels Pmax and Pmin by analogy with Eq. 7:
Fig. 8 Droplet cuto from the background. The image is analyzed locally a to determine the mask b surrounding the droplet and to isolate the droplet c. The surrounding droplets do not interfere with the local twolevel image d

986 Fig. 9 Local grey level histogram a and sub-pixel contour b of the droplet image in Fig. 8c

a 100
75 Pmin Pmax

pixel count

50 25 0

50

100

grey level

150

200

250

volume is obtained by summation of the elementary volumes. For a prolate spheroid shape having its principal axis in the image plane, the volume-based radius leads to the good estimation of the droplet volume, whereas the surface-based radius introduce an error which increases indenitely as the ellipticity of the image decreases from 1 to 0. The ellipticity is dened in the next section. For an oblate spheroid shape, the error introduced on the estimated volume by the volume-based radius is also lower than the one obtained from the surface-based radius. Finally, to estimate the droplet focusing, it is necessary to compute the radius dierence Drmeas based on the areas A0.77 and A0.25 obtained from the sub-pixel contours at the relative levels 0.77 and 0.25, respectively (Fig. 10b): r r A0:77 A0:25 : 30 Drmeas p p

of the image in the plane and rmax and rmin are the maximum and the minimum distances from this point to the contour. This parameter measures the uniformity of the mass distribution around the center of gravity G and it increases from 0 to as the image shape becomes less and less uniform. The sphericity parameter Sp (Eq. 32) quanties the likeness between the droplet shape and the spherical shape. The area of the droplet image SI is compared to the circular surface SC of same area centered on G (see Fig. 11b). For a spherical droplet, we have Sp=0. guniformity Sp sphericity eellipticity rmax rmin ; 0 < g < 1; rmeas areaSI [ SC SI \ SC ;0 < Sp < 2; areaSI 31 32 33 34

Lmin ; 0 < e < 1; Lmax perimeterSC ; 0 < u < 1: perimeterSI

uirregularity 3.5 Morphological parameters Four nondimensional morphological parameters are dened to qualify the droplet shapes. These parameters also dene a morphological space in which dierent shape families can be identied. The denition of the uniformity parameter g (Eq. 31) is illustrated in Fig. 11a where G is the center of gravity
Fig. 10 Droplet size parameters: a volume reconstruction and b sub-pixel contours used to determine the reference areas (:l=0.25,: l=0.61;: l=0.77)

The ellipticity parameter e measures the stretching of the droplet (Eq. 33). It corresponds to the ratio of the width to the length of the rectangle that most closely encompasses the droplet image (see Fig. 11c). The last parameter / called irregularity (Eq. 34) is representative of the folds of the shape interface and is based on the perimeter of the image.

987

Fig. 11 Morphological parameter denition: a uniformity, b sphericity and c ellipticity. The black point corresponds to the gravity center of the shapes

For a circular shape, the four parameters verify: g 0; Sp 0; e 1; u 1: 35

For some classes of shape family, a relationship between these dierent morphological parameters exists. For example, the elliptic shape family is governed by the relations expressed by Eqs. 36, 37 and 38: 1e ge p ; e Sp;e r! r 4 e 1 arcsin arcsin ; p 1e 1e 1 ! 3 1 e 1 p : 4 2 e 36

37

estimation of the PSF width must also be experimentally validated. Finally, the inuence of the image shape on the corrections included in the model must be evaluated. The same optical imaging setup was used for all the experiments presented in this paper. A noncoherent light source (Nanolite - HSPS) of very short duration (.10 ns) is used in a backlight conguration to illuminate the spray. A Sony XC-8500 CCD camera (763581 pixels) is used with a long working distance microscope (Iscooptic) of NA.0.1. The results presented in this section was obtained with a magnication giving a resolution R=1,260 pixels/mm. The eld of view is thus 606463 lm2 and the minimum PSF half-width at the focus plane is vmin=4 lm. The Table 1 summarizes the resolution, eld of view and corresponding minimum PSF half-width for the dierent congurations used in this paper.

ue

38

4.1 Calibration of the diameter estimation To calibrate the sizing procedure, a reticle on which calibrated discs are engraved was placed in the object space. The diameters of the analyzed discs was between 10 and 100 lm. The reticle was translated along the optical axis by 50 lm steps. For each disc of known size and each position of the reticle, the contrast Cmeas, the image radius rmeas and the radius dierence Drmeas were measured. The contrast coecient s was determined from the maximum contrast measured on the largest object and yielded s=0.013. The measured contrast Cmeas is corrected by use of Eq. 11 to give the normalized contrast C0. The true disc radius a divided by the measured radius rmeas is represented in Fig. 12 as a function of the normalized contrast C0. The image radius is corrected from the variation of the lateral magnication with the position of the object along the optical axis. This variation is induced by the fact that the objective is not telecentric. The scattering of the points for low values of C0 is not due to a limitation of the model but to an underesti-

The elliptic shape family is then represented in the morphological space (g, Sp, e, /) by a curve dened by Eqs. 36, 37 and 38. Near elliptical droplets are identied through a morphological lter retaining droplets of morphology (g, Sp, e, /) near to (ge, Sp, e, /e). Of course, other morphological lters can be dened for other morphological studies.

4 Calibration procedure
The formation of the image on the detector was modeled in Section 2. This model must be compared to the experiment. To do so, several hypotheses have to be validated by a calibration procedure. First, the correction law (Eq. 16) used to estimate the object diameter must be veried and if necessary, calibrated to take into account specic aspects of the setup not included in the model. The localization of the droplet based on the

Table 1 Resolution (R), eld of view (FV) and PSF half-width in the focus plane vmin of the dierent optical congurations used in the experiments Experiments Calibration Ultrasonic spray Diesel spray R(pix/mm) 1,260 640 1,270 FV (lm2) 606463 1,193908 560457 vmin(lm) 4 5.5 3

988

mation of the image radius. Eectively, for C0.0.10.2 the grey level prole is at and the slope at the edge is very low. The measurement of the image radius is thus very sensitive to the threshold level Pref. In the case of low contrast, the determination of Pmin is not so robust and local noise in the prole can induce an underestimation of Pmin, and thus of Pref and rmeas. The dotted curve in Fig. 12 corresponds to the prediction of the model given by Eq. 15. It is clear that the experiment deviates from the model. The radius measured at relative level 0.61 for a given contrast is, in fact, larger in the experiment than in the theory. It is supposed that the dierence is due to an experimental PSF slightly dierent from the Gaussian. A polynomial regression of order 3 is then computed on the experimental points to obtain a calibrated correction law in place of the one predicted by the model. This regression is used hereafter to estimate droplet sizes. 4.2 Calibration of the focusing estimation The PSF form and width have not been measured directly. In fact, for each position of the reticle in the object space, the PSF half-width is estimated through Eq. 21. A dierent value for vest is then obtained for each disc and for each position of the disc along the optical axis (z). The results are reported in Fig. 13 for the variation of vest versus z. The focal plane is located where vest reaches its minimum value: z is set to 0 for this position. The estimated PSF width increases linearly with z when defocusing increases. This is a typical behavior of a microscope objective. A linear regression of the data leads to the following estimation of the PSF half-width:

0,06 0,05
10 m 15 m 20 m 30 m 40 m 60 m 100 m

est (mm)

0,04 0,03 0,02 0,01 0 -1 -0,5

0,5

z (mm)
Fig. 13 Calibration of the PSF width. The depth of eld (Dz . 400 lm) is dened by the choice of the maximum PSF width (vmax=10 lm)

vest mm 0:0041 0:031jzjmm:

39

1 0,8

a/rmeas

0,6 0,4 0,2 0

10 m 15 m 20 m 30 m 40 m 60 m 100 m experiment model

Discrepancies increase progressively when |z| increases. Here again, the experiment deviates progressively from the theory. We can explain this by a progressive change of the shape of the experimental PSF. Indeed, the real PSF for an unfocused object results from the convolution of the focused PSF and a defocalization PSF that can be modeled by geometrical optics (Stokseth 1969). Nevertheless, as narrow depths of eld are considered here in order to measure correctly the smallest droplets, the deviation observed between the results for the dierent discs is low. It can be seen from Fig. 13 that xing vmax is equivalent to choose the limits for the depth of eld Dz=zmaxzmin, which is considered to be independent of the object size in a rst approximation. The discrepancies between the points for the PSF width estimated from the disc of dierent diameters induce an uncertainty in the determination of the limits of the depth of eld. For vmax=10 lm, it yields a depth of eld Dz.380140 lm. However, we must keep in mind that without any sorting of the drop images, the depth of eld varies from 0.6 to more than 2.3 mm for objects of size between 10 and 40 lm. Fixing the depth of eld by this way does not prevent from the eect of image overlapping considered in Section 4.4. 4.3 Eect of the object shape The imaging model was developed for circular-shaped objects but non spherical droplets can be analyzed through the morphological analysis of the images. The inuence of the shape of the object has been tested numerically to evaluate the model. Synthetic images of elliptic discs with 0.1 e 1 have been ltered by a

0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0,6 0,7 0,8 0,9

C0
Fig. 12 Calibration of the sizing procedure. The coecients of the polynomial in Eq. 15 are (a0,a1,a2,a3,a4)=(0.20441, 2.7503, 4.9341, 4.7441, 1.8137) for the model and (a0,a1,a2,a3,a4)=(0.39654, 1.1025, 0.84537, 0.26805, 0) for the experiment

989

Gaussian of variable width to simulate the defocusing eect. The blurred images were analyzed by the sizing and defocusing estimation procedures. The results are reported in Fig. 14. Area-based radii are considered here. The relative error (aesta)/a is plotted versus the ellipticity for dierent nondimensional object sizes ~ 1; 1:5; 2; 2:5; 3 in Fig. 14a. Obviously, the error a begins to be signicant for ellipticity lower than 0.5, but there is not a clear eect of the nondimensional radius ~ a on this error. The relative error for the estimated PSF width (vestv)/v increases when e decreases (Fig. 14(b)) as it does for the size estimation, but the relative error on the PSF width is one order of magnitude greater than the relative error for the diameter estimation. Nevertheless, the error on the determination of v is not very important as it is used only to dene the measurement volume. For a droplet not localized near the maximum unfocused position, given by v . vmax, the estimation of v has no incidence on the measurement, although it is true that a droplet localized near the maximum unfocused position could be rejected by an error on the estimation of v due to a pronounced elliptic shape. 4.4 Limit in droplet concentration The imaging process leads to the projection of the droplet contour on the image plane. This projection converts the 3D distribution of drops in the object space to a 2D distribution of droplet images on the image plane. For the image to be analyzable, the droplet image concentration on the image plane must not be too high. The projected area Ap can be estimated by the meansurface diameter D20 of the droplet size distribution. Indeed, if N is the number of droplets in the measurement volume then: Z 1 pD2 pD2 20 Ap fn DdD N : 40 N 4 4 0 The number of drops in the measurement volume (Lx Ly Lz) is related to the drop concentration Cv: N=Cv Lx Ly Lz. The drop concentration can thus be expressed by:
Fig. 14 Validation of the sizing a and defocusing b estimation procedures for elliptic objects. open circle ~ 1; lled a triangle ~ 1:5; lled inverted a triangle ~ 2; lled square a ~ 2:5; lled circle ~ 3: a a Relative error on the diameter estimation is quite small. The error for the estimation of the PSF width is greater but it has little impact on the measurement accuracy

Cv

1 Ap : Lz pD2 =4 Lx Ly 20

41

The last term Ap/(Lx Ly)=scov represents the ratio of the total projected surface of the droplet images over the surface of the image plane. This ratio can be greater than the eective surface image concentration when image overlapping occurs. In the case of the Diesel spray application characterized by a very small droplet size distributions (D20 .5 lm), and for scov=0.25 and Lz= 2 mm for a~30 lm, Eq. 41 gives a drop concentration of 5000 droplets/mm3. In this estimation, Lz is the maximum depth for detection of the biggest droplets (see Calibration of the focusing estimation). High droplet concentrations lead to high values of scov and result in overlapping eects which are treated by the following ways: Partially overlapping images are separated by a specic module of the morphological analysis which uses the sub-pixel contour and the grey level gradient along the contour to dissociate dierent images (Yon 2003; Yon and Blaisot 2004). Totally overlapping process is dealt with by a model for the correction of the size distribution observed when scov is too high (scov 0.5) (Yon 2003; Yon and Blaisot 2004). The missed droplet population is estimated considering a random distribution of droplets in space. In the case of applications to Diesel sprays, it was shown that as soon as images are analyzable, the correction of the apparent drop size distribution becomes negligible. The correction obtained by this model is signicant in the case of wide drop size distributions, the probability for a given drop to be covered by another one being in this case not negligible.

4.5 Testing of the drop sizing on a well-controlled experiment The validation of the new drop sizing technique was done comparing its performances with two other diagnostics: a diraction-based granulometer (Spray-

a 0,06
0,05

b
0,8

0,03 0,02 0,01 0 0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1

(est - )/

(aest - a)/a

0,04

0,6 0,4 0,2 0

0,2

0,4

0,6

0,8

990

techMalvern) and a PDPA (Dantec). An ultrasonic atomizer (POLYSPRAY) fed with water was chosen to produce a well-atomized and diluted spray with very low drop velocities. The working frequency of the atomizer is 47 KHz and the mass owing rate is 4.2 mg/s. The measurement point is 15 mm below the injector nozzle for the three techniques. The optical settings of the imaging system are given in Table 1. The linear regression for the estimation of the PSF half-width gives vest (mm)=0.0056+0.014 |z| (mm) in this conguration. It was veried with the PDPA measurements that there was no correlation between the drop size and the drop velocity. Temporal distributions obtained from the PDPA can thus be directly compared to spatial distribution obtained from diffraction or image analysis. The results are presented in Fig. 15. In order to compare the droplet size distributions, the spatial ltering is applied to prevent an overestimation of the biggest droplets. The maximum PSF half-width was xed to vmax=20 lm leading to a depth of eld of 2 mm. In order to compare measurements to other techniques, the morphological ltering of the elliptic objects (see Sect. 3, Morphological parameters) is also applied to retain only near-spherical droplets. The image-based distribution obtained with these two lters is noted FSM in Fig. 15 and the nonltered distribution is also reported (F0). The eect of the ltering on the overestimated population of biggest drops is clear, the FSM distribution is shifted towards smaller drop diameters. The three distributions obtained from the PDPA, the diraction technique and the image-based technique with spatial and morphological lters (FSM) are very similar. The SMD obtained from each technique are equal to 30.3, 34.9 and 35.11 lm, respectively with diraction, PDPA and image analysis.

5 Application to the diesel spray

5.1 Experimental setup The Diesel spray is well known to be hardly measurable as a consequence of high liquid speeds and high concentrations encountered in such a ow. Furthermore, the spherical hypothesis is still to be proved in this spray. The capability of the image-based granulometer to analyze sprays in severe conditions is thus tested on a Diesel spray. No comparison with other diagnostics will be presented in this section due to the limitation of these diagnostics for this kind of application. A 200 lm diameter single orice Ganzer injector is placed vertically and fed by a pneumatic pump to provide fuel pressures Pi=60 MPa. The nozzle length is 800 lm giving a L/D ratio of 4. This injector is not representative of multi-hole commercial injector but it is used to produce one Diesel jet of similar properties. The fuel is injected at ambient pressure and temperature (P0=100 kPa, T=20C). The injection lasts 2 ms and the needle lift position is measured as a function of time. Experiments have been done with Diesel fuel. There is an hydraulic delay between the command time t0 and the start of injection tsi. At low injection pressure this delay is not stable. In order to avoid the jitter between t0 and tsi, the start of injection is detected with a photodiode placed at the nozzle exit. The light source is driven at a time ti synchronized with tsi. The PSF half-width of the optical conguration used for this application is given by vest(mm)=0.0031 + 0.022 |z| (mm). The minimum measurable diameter calculated from Eq. 17 is dmin= 2.2 lm. The maximum PSF half-width vmax for the spatial lter given by Eq. 18 is vmax .3 lm for dmin= 2.2 lm but the maximum value was xed to vmax=5 lm in order to enlarge the measurement volume and thus to increase the droplet counting. This yields to the depth of eld Dz .170 lm and results in a slight underestimation of the smallest droplets (d<5 lm). The size of the measurement volume is thus 0.560.460.17= 43103 mm3. For each measurement point, 700 images of the spray were recorded to produce smoothed size distributions. The average number of droplets counted in each drop distribution ranges from 10,000 to 80,000 depending on the measurement location and the lters applied.

0,05

FSM F0 Diffraction PDPA

0,04

fv(1/m)

0,03

0,02

0,01

Table 2 Measurement locations and name convention for the tested positions
0 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100 110 120 130 140 150

Name 60ul 60ur 60dl 60dr

Pi (MPa) 60 60 60 60

X (mm) 30 30 60 60

Y (mm) -3 3 -3 3

Drop diameter (m)

Fig. 15 Comparison of the image-based drop sizing technique with PDPA and diraction techniques. FOimage-based granulometry without ltering, FSMimage-based granulometry with spatial and morphological ltering

991

6 Results
The drop size distributions are measured 30 mm and 60 mm from the nozzle tip, for two symmetrical radial positions (see Table 2 and Fig. 16a). Measurement times are xed during the quasi stationary period of the injection, i.e., ti=1911 ls for X=30 mm and ti=1991 ls for X=60 mm. Typical Diesel spray images are shown in Fig. 16be. Focused, slightly unfocused and largely unfocused droplets are visible on these images. Volume-based drop size distributions are presented in Fig. 17. For each measurement position, the direct distribution (F0) is compared to the one obtained with the application of the spatial lter (FS). The morphological lter is not applied anymore as the results are not compared with other granulometers in this section. The expected eect of the spatial lter, i.e., the correction of the overestimation of the population of the big drops, is clearly seen in Fig. 17a for the point 60ul and also in Fig. 17c and 17d. Without spatial ltering, drop size distributions on both sides of the jet at a given downstream position are quite similar. When the spatial lter is applied, a dissymmetry is observed for X=30 mm (Fig. 17a and 17b). In fact, the distribution for 60ur is bi-modal with FS, as a result of a well-localized phenomenon. It was noticed in previous studies on the same injector, that for this particular location, the Diesel spray is characterized by a temporal oscillation of the droplet density. It is though that this could be the consequence of periodical droplet clusters or lateral jet apping generated by cavitation, appearing in a small defect located on the right side of the nozzle outlet. The dierence between the drop size distribution with and without spatial ltering can thus be due to the fact that this cavitation-induced phenomenon is three-dimensional as mentioned by (Soteriou 2001) and well-localized. The drop size distributions at 60 mm from the nozzle tip (60dl and 60dr) are clearly mono-modal distributions centered around 12 lm. The small droplets (d<8 lm) that are dominating upstream have nearly disappeared 30 mm below. This could be due to the fact that the dense parts of the jet are composed of bigger droplets than the dilute parts. The reduction of the population of the small droplets (d<8 lm) when applying the spatial lter can thus be due to the fact that the focus plane is located in a dense region surrounded by more dilute parts of the spray. In particular, unfocused drops should be located in a dilute region, i.e., in a region where the small drops are dominating. The spatial lter suitably eliminates those small unfocused droplets from the distribution. The morphological analysis has been used to characterize the mean drop shape as a function of the drop size. The results for 60ur and 60dr are presented in Fig. 18. The measurement points 60ur and 60dr was chosen for the dierence observed in the size distribu-

tion. The mean value of the four shape parameters are computed for all diameter class. The standard deviation for e and / is also presented on this gure (error bars). The mean shape of the drops seems nearer from the spherical shape at the center of distribution modes as indicated by the minimum for Sp and g and the maximum for e and /. However, the standard devitation of the shape parameters are higher at the extrema of the drop size distribution. This could simply results from less robust mean values caused by lesspopulated classes. It must be noticed that parameters Sp and g, which must be near from zero for spherical drops, also has a higher range of values (resp. [0, 2] and [0, ]) than e and /. The standard deviations for Sp and g (resp. .0.2 and .0.3) are thus higher also than for the two other parameters (arround 0.1) and were not represented for clarity of the Fig. 18. The morphological analysis indicates that when the drop size distribution presents two modes, the shape parameters seem also to present the same number of extrema as shown for 60ur in Fig.18a. The mostpopulated diameter classes seem thus to be wellatomized due to the near spherical shape of these drops. A temporal analysis of the Diesel jet has also been performed during the quasi-stationary part of the injection for the position 60ur and over the entire injection time at the other side of the spray, at the position 60dl. The temporal evolution of the SMD and of the morphological parameters is presented in Fig. 19. Only a weak variation of the SMD is observed during the injection time. Except for the rst and last 360 ls of the injection when the droplet diameters are a little larger, the mean diameters during the injection is about 5 lm for the two positions considered (X=30 and 60 mm). At the two distances from the injector, the temporal similarity observed between the mean diameters is no longer seen for the morphological parameters. Indeed, a time dependence of the four morphological parameters is observed at the point 60ur associated to X= 30 mm. This dependence is clearly seen from the irregularity parameter / whose stabilization is observed during the quasi-stationary setting up. This temporal dependence is not observed anymore at the second point studied (60dl, X=60 mm). The droplet morphology relaxes along the downstream position towards spherical shape, i.e., g and Sp decreases toward 0 and e and / increases toward 1, so the atomization process is still in progress between X=30 mm and X=60 mm. It can also be noticed that the behavior of the injector is not that reproducible. This is particularly evident for the mean shape parameters at the point 60ur and around 2,000 ms which are not of the same order than for the analysis at a xed time (see Fig. 18). This particular behavior shows the sensitivity of the drop shape analysis.

992 Fig. 16 Location of the measurement points along the Diesel plume (a) and example of Diesel spray images for each position (b)(e)

Fig. 17 Droplet size distributions: a 60ul, b 60ur, c 60dl, d 60dr. F0: no lter applied, FS: spatial ltering. Measurement locations are indicated in Table 2 and in Fig. 16

Finally, to illustrate what extra contribution the drop shape analysis can add to the spray analysis, we reported

in Fig. 20 some drop images recorded at the end of the Diesel injection with the corresponding value of the drop shape parameters. The drop shapes of the too upper rows correspond to the kind of shape commonly encountered in the Diesel spray. The four lower ones are

993

Fig. 18 Droplet size distributions with spatial lter and mean drop shape parameters for each diameter distribution class. Error bars indicate the standard deviation for e and /: a 60ur, b 60dr

specic shapes of the end of injection. These nonspherical droplets, usually rejected or not correctly characterized by classical techniques, can however lead to the production of unburned particles in the combustion process, due to their big size. We believe that a wise classication of the shapes based on the morphological parameters, can help atomization analysis. Indeed, primary and secondary breakup regimes can be classied through the shape of the liquid element being broken or formed (see Liu and Reitz 1996 for example). Our challenge now is to associate quantitative values to the shapes subjectively associated to each breakup regime.

7 Conclusion
A new approach to spray-sizing by image analysis is presented. It is based on the modeling of the image formation. The image model has been used to dene criteria for the correction of the apparent size of an unfocused drop and for the determination of a measurement volume independent of the drop size. Image-based drop sizing techniques was also used to analyze the shape of the drops. Four morphological parameters have been proposed here to qualify the drop shapes. Morphological ltering of the spherical or elliptic droplets is also applied for comparison with other techniques. One of the remaining limits of the image-based sizing technique is the eect of image overlapping. However, it was found that for a narrow drop size distribution, the eect could be neglected. The image-based drop sizing technique was rst applied to an ultrasonic spray. Results are compared to diraction-based and PDPA measurements. The three techniques are in agreement, giving similar the drop size distributions. The new drop sizing technique was also submitted to more severe conditions, in an application to a Diesel spray. A very low SMD (.5 lm) is found during the quasi stationary period of the injection. The results reveal also the presence of two modes in the drop size

Fig. 19 Temporal variation of the SMD and of the morphological parameters versus injection time for Pi=60 MPa: lled circle 30 mm downstream (60ur) and 60 mm downstream (60dl) the nozzle outlet. The continuous line stands for the needle lift curve

Fig. 20 Images of drops encountered at the end of the injection time

994

distributions at 30 mm from the nozzle outlet. It is believed that the bimodal drops size distribution could be the consequence of a periodical phenomenon, generated by cavitation appearing in a small defect located on the right side of the nozzle outlet. The small SMD is almost constant during the injection and along the downstream position. However, the morphological analysis allows us to observe that the mean shape of the droplets is not stable during the injection near the injector, whereas it is nearly constant in time 60 mm downstream from the nozzle outlet. As could be guessed, it was shown that the drop shape evolves spatially towards the spherical shape. The characteristic time for drop size stabilization is found to be shorter than the characteristic time form drop shape relaxation. Some energy is still working on the liquid gas interface or is not totally dissipated, leading to the deformation of the drops. This might have to be considered when evaporation and combustion processes are involved. The objective of this work is now to proceed to the classication of the shapes, based on the morphological parameters, in such way that primary and secondary breakup regimes can be classied through a quantitative approach.

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