The internal flow of diesel nozzles has a strong influence on the subsequent spray and atomization characteristics. A flow visualization experiment system equipped with enlarged transparent nozzles was set up to investigate the effect of different nozzle structures and different nozzle enlarged scales on cavitating flow and subsequent spray characteristics. Significant parameters of internal flow including critical pressure of cavitation inception, critical pressure of hydraulic flip, discharge coefficient, Reynolds number, flow rate and cavitation distribution were fully investigated during the experiments. Experimental results show that the nozzles with small length/diameter ratios at the same orifice diameter were more inclined to cavitate and had higher discharge coefficient than that of nozzles with large length/diameter ratios. Cavitating flow in nozzles with different sac volume structures may incur different spray characteristics in the near-nozzle field and it is the internal cavitating flow that induces the asymmetry of subsequent spray. The investigations indicate that the critical pressure of hydraulic flip and discharge coefficient of nozzles under different needle lifts were quite different even under the same boundary conditions and the nozzle flow characteristics have been greatly influenced by the hydraulic flip phenomenon. Two types of cavitation were observed in nozzles with different scaled-up times and the string cavitation was found in three times scaled-up nozzle, while the cloud cavitation bubbles were appeared in five and eight times scaled-up nozzles. A kind of hysteretic cavitation phenomenon was also observed in the experiment and then was analyzed in this paper. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
