Ultrafast high-repetition imaging of fuel sprays using picosecond fiber laser
Résumé
Modern diesel injectors operate at very high injection pressures of about 2000 bar resulting in injection velocities as high as 700 m/s near the nozzle outlet. In order to better predict the behavior of the atomization process at such high pressures, high-resolution spray images at high repetition rates must be recorded. However, due to extremely high velocity in the near-nozzle region, high-speed cameras fail to avoid blurring of the structures in the spray images due to their exposure time. Ultrafast imaging featuring ultra-short laser pulses to freeze the motion of the spray appears as an well suited solution to overcome this limitation. However, most commercial high-energy ultrafast sources are limited to a few kHz repetition rates. In the present work, we report the development of a custom-designed picosecond fiber laser generating similar to 20 ps pulses with an average power of 2.5 W at a repetition rate of 8.2 MHz, suitable for high-speed imaging of high-pressure fuel jets. This fiber source has been proof tested by obtaining backlight images of diesel sprays issued from a single-orifice injector at an injection pressure of 300 bar. We observed a consequent improvement in terms of image resolution compared to standard white-light illumination. In addition, the compactness and stability against perturbations of our fiber laser system makes it particularly suitable for harsh experimental conditions. (C) 2015 Optical Society of America