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THE liquid fuel injection process plays an important role in many aspects of combustion performance. To achieve the surface to mass high ratios in the liquid phase leading to the desired very high rates of evaporation, the liquid fuel must be fully atomized before its arrival at the combustion zone.

Atomization can be accomplished by spreading the fuel into a thin sheet whose induced instability promotes its disintegration into ligaments which then collapse into droplets due to surface tension action. This also can be achieved by discharging the fuel through orifices with specially shaped passages, which also leads it to become a thin sheet from which ligaments and ultimately droplets are formed so that these resulting droplets will be distributed through the combustion zone in a controlled pattern and direction. In applications where combustion rates must be high, such as, for example, in aircraft gas turbines (around …