Fabrication and Testing of Tapered Electro-spray Nozzles

Abstract

The U.S. Army is interested in compact fuel-to-electric power systems to provide portable power sources for Soldiers and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). This work describes multiple methods aimed at creating microfabricated, tapered-tip, electro-spray (E-spray) nozzles for efficient fuel injection. It has been shown that E-spray scaling depends on a number of factors, including nozzle/emitter geometry. Use of the new tapered nozzle tip diameters of 18 m compared to a previous minimum of 30 m allowed for E-spray operation below 0.01 ml/h at 70 C fuel pre-heat, which is a 25-fold decrease over the minimum of 0.25 ml/h possible with 90- m-diameter, flat topped nozzles at 56 C. A dense array of tapered nozzles could meet a minimum power requirement, while using very low flow rates per nozzle to obtain small combustor geometries.

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Document Details

Document Type
Technical Report
Publication Date
Sep 01, 2012
Accession Number
ADA570592

Entities

People

  • Brendan Hanrahan
  • C. M. Waits

Organizations

  • United States Army Research Laboratory

Tags

Communities of Interest

  • Advanced Electronics
  • Energy and Power Technologies

DTIC Thesaurus Topics

  • Aircrafts
  • Diameters
  • Electric Power
  • Electron Microscopy
  • Fabrication
  • Films
  • Flow Rate
  • Fuel Injection
  • Geometry
  • Hydroxides
  • Materials Processing
  • Oxide Films
  • Oxides
  • Power
  • Spray Nozzles
  • Unmanned Aerial Vehicles
  • Vapor Pressure

Readers

  • Fluid Dynamics.
  • Mathematics or Statistics
  • Nanoscale Plasmonic Nanotechnology

Technology Areas

  • Autonomy