The characterisation of diesel nozzle flow using high speed imaging of elastic light scattering

► A novel optical technique to investigate cavitation flow inside optically accessible injectors. ► Normalised cavitation scattering area was observed to increase with diesel common rail pressure for all diesel fuel samples. ► Injected fuel mass was observed to increase as the normalised cavitation scattering area decreased. ► A ranking order of normalised cavitation scattering area and injected fuel mass for the five diesel fuel samples was obtained.