Toward the design of low flow-rate multijet impingement spray atomizers

When setting the baseline for discussing options toward a more efficient use of water resources, one of the drivers for decoupling economic growth and environmental impact is the development of resource-efficient innovations and instruments. One of such fields of interest is the design of water efficient showerheads, which provide a good shower experience, while consuming low flow rates (<3 l/min), and potentiating energy savings for heating water. As a step forward in this challenge, the approach followed in this work is motivated by the need to develop tools for designing tailored sprays toward a high degree of efficiency in water usage. However, in order to design tailored sprays, it is important to establish a proper relation between the atomizer's geometric configuration, operating conditions and the desired characteristics for the spray droplets (size and velocity). Therefore, this work focus on this tailoring through a multijet impingement atomization strategy using 2 and 3 impinging jets. An investigation is reported on the parametric effects on the dynamic characteristics of droplets of jet-impingement angle (40-90°) and pre-impingement distances (2.5-7.5 mm), for a range of jet Weber numbers (20