Experiments in Fluids (2005) 39: 977–994
DOI 10.1007/s00348-005-0026-4
R EA SE A RC H AR T IC L E
J. B. Blaisot Æ J. Yon
Droplet size and morphology characterization for dense sprays by image
processing: application to the Diesel spray
Received: 14 June 2004 / Revised: 3 March 2005 / Accepted: 7 July 2005 / Published online: 19 October 2005

Springer-Verlag 2005
Abstract Up to now, measurement of drop size remains
difficult in dense sprays such as those encountered in
Diesel applications. Commonly used diagnostics are
often limited due to multi-scattering effects, high drop
velocity and concentration and also nonspherical
shapes. The advantage of image-based techniques on the
others is its ability to describe the shape of liquid par-
ticles that are not fully atomized or relaxed. In the
present study, a model is developed to correct the main
drawbacks of imaging. It permits to define criteria for
the correction of the apparent size of an unfocused drop
and to determine a measurement volume independent of
the drop size. This considerably reduces the over-esti-
mation of large drops in the drop size distribution. Drop
shapes are also characterized by four morphological
parameters. The image-based granulometer is satisfac-
torily compared to a PDPA and a diffraction-based
granulometer for measurements on an ultrasonic spray.
Then, the new granulometer is applied to a diesel spray.
One of the results of the analysis is that even if mean
drop size distributions are stable 30 mm downstream
from the nozzle outlet, the shape of the drops is still
evolving towards the spherical shape. The atomization
process is thus not totally established at this position in
opposition to what can be deduced from the drop size
distribution alone.
1 Introduction
The pollutant emissions caused by combustion engines
represent an important problem for the environment.
Transport activity is considered by international
J. B. Blaisot (&) Æ J. Yon
UMR CNRS 6614—CORIA, Laboratoire de Thermodynamique,
Université et INSA de Rouen, 76801 Saint Etienne du Rouvray,
France
E-mail: jean-bernard.blaisot@coria.fr
organizations such as International Programs Center
(IPC), to be responsible for more than 20% of the
greenhouse gas emissions. In order to reduce the
pollutant gas emissions of cars, car manufacturers
have to develop new engines that are compliant with
more and more restrictive pollution regulation laws.
Injection systems able to produce very fine sprays
represent one development axis that has been followed
over the last two decades to reduce pollutant emis-
sions, particularly concerning Diesel injection. The
very fine sprays are obtained by increasing the injec-
tion pressures in common rail systems, decreasing the
nozzle hole diameters and reducing the injection-
duration time. However, because of the high optical
density of the Diesel sprays, it is not possible to
identify either large liquid blobs that are not totally
atomized or dense spray regions composed of very fine
droplets. The optical density makes the diagnostics of
the Diesel spray very difficult. The most commonly
used diagnostics for Diesel spray analysis are diffrac-
tion-based granulometer and Phase Doppler Particle
Analyzer (PDPA). Hardalupas (1992) and Guerrassi
and Champoussin (1995) used a PDPA measurement
and observed, in an atmospheric environment, a de-
crease of the droplet Sauter mean diameter (SMD)
with the increase of the radial distance from the axis
of injection. A completely different result was obtained
by Gülder and Smallwood (1999) who used a dif-
fraction granulometer to analyze the Diesel spray and
observed a radial increase of the SMD. This contra-
diction clearly shows that the results must be carefully
interpreted. Diffraction measurement and PDPA are
suspected to be unsuited to dense sprays, due to the
multi-scattering effect. Another important limitation of
these techniques concerns the droplet sphericity
hypothesis on which they rely. We can notice that
other drop size measurement techniques are under
development such as holography (Buraga et al. 2000),
planar laser scattering (Domann and Hardalupas
2000), out of focus laser scattering imaging (Calabria
and Massoli 2001) and speckle light scattering
978
(Ineichen 2003). Nevertheless these diagnostics are not
yet ready to analyze dense industrial sprays such as
Diesel sprays.
Image-based granulometry is another emerging
technique available to analyze the sprays, as can be
seen in the recent review of Lee and Kim (2003). The
principal interest of this technique resides in its ability
to quantitatively analyze the liquid element morphol-
ogy. This is a good indicator of the level of droplet
atomization. Up to now, the main limitation of these
diagnostics is the out-of-focus phenomenon (Koh
et al. 2001). Indeed, on an image, an unfocused
droplet seems to be larger than a focused one of the
same size. Therefore, accounting for unfocused drop-
lets implies an overestimation of the biggest diameters
in the droplet size distributions. There are different
ways to avoid this phenomenon. One of these consists
in defining a focus criteria in order to reject all
unfocused droplets. This has been proposed by dif-
ferent authors such as Fantini et al. (1990), Lecuona
et al. (2000), Koh et al. (2001), Lee and Kim (2003)
and Kim and Kim (1994). This method has two
drawbacks. Firstly, the droplet rejection rate is high,
so numerous pictures of the sprays have to be ana-
lyzed in order to construct smooth droplet size dis-
tributions. The second limitation is linked to the fact
that small droplets are more concerned by the out-of-
focus phenomenon than bigger ones, resulting in an
overestimation of the biggest droplets. To overcome
this point, Hay et al. (1998) used a gradient criterion
to define a depth of field independent of the drop
diameters. Nevertheless, this criterion was based on an
empirical relationship.
The blurring effect on unfocused droplet images has
to be taken into account in order to correct the
measurement of the droplet diameter. Blaisot and
Ledoux (1998) and Malot and Blaisot (2000) proposed
Fig. 1 Definition of optical
axes in object and image planes
an imaging model based on the estimation of the
point spread function (PSF) to carry out such
correction for the measurement of the diameter of
well-located liquid drops. However, when applied to
spatially dispersed sprays, this model suffer from the
same limitation indicated above: the population of big
drops is overestimated. We propose in the present
paper an improvement of the PSF model in order to
evaluate the droplet focusing. The optical PSF width
is usually considered as the resolution limit for the
recording device (film or camera). This is not the case
in the present application where the PSF is spatially
resolved by the CCD camera (more than 10 pixels
over the PSF width). Thus the PSF width is evaluated
through the analysis of the gray-level profile at the
outline of the drop image. As the PSF width is related
to the droplet location relative to the focusing plane,
the selection of droplet image characterized by a PSF
width below a chosen maximum value is used to
delimit the measurement volume along the depth from
focus direction.
The first part of this paper consists in the presen-
tation of the improved model of the droplet image
formation. The different steps of the image processing
for the extraction of the image parameters necessary
to the measurement of the droplet diameter, the
focusing and the morphological characterization of the
droplets is presented. Next, the calibration process of
the model with our optical setup is presented. Drop
size measurements on a calibrated ultrasonic spray
are compared to PDPA and diffraction-based granu-
lometers. The paper ends with the application of this
new size and morphology analyzer to a Diesel spray.
It is found that the shape analysis is relevant for
the characterization of the atomization process
through the information it adds to the drop size
distribution.

2 Image modeling
In the case of an imaging system using a noncoherent
light source, the illumination distribution in the image
plane i(x, y) can be described by the convolution product
of the irradiance distribution in the object plane o(x¢, y¢)
and the PSF of the imaging system s(x, y) (Goodman
1968):
iðx; yÞ ¼ oðx0 ; y 0 Þ
sðx; yÞ:
The coordinates (x¢, y¢) and (x, y) are associated to the
object plane and the image plane, respectively (see
Fig. 1). The axis z, perpendicular to the planes (x¢, y¢)
and (x, y), is the optical axis of the imaging setup. The
PSF can be defined as the diffraction image of an
infinitesimally small source point. This image would be
merely a point under geometric optics. In order to
compute the convolution product in the image plane, we
replace the object function o(x¢,y¢) by its geometric im-
age og(x,y), deduced from the object function simply by
a homothetic transformation of ratio equal to the lateral
magnification c of the imaging set-up.
2.1 Object modeling
The imaging set-up is in a backlight configuration and
the objects under consideration are droplets of liquid
illuminated by a white, noncoherent light source. Only
opaque or slightly transmitting objects are considered.
The amount of transmitted light is characterized by the
contrast coefficient s. The irradiance distribution in the
object plane, the object function, can thus ffi be expressed
pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
in cylindrical coordinates ðr ¼ x2 þ y 2 Þ by:
 
r strongly changes with the location of the object along the
og ðx; yÞ ¼ og ðrÞ ¼ 1  ð1  sÞP ; ð2Þ
2ai
where ai=c ao is the radius of the geometric image, ao
being the object radius and Pð~rÞ is the rectangle func-
tion:
 y). Finally, it will be supposed in the following that the
1 for j~rj \ 0:5;
Pð~rÞ ¼
0 otherwise:
As indicated in the introduction, the principle of the
image analysis is based on the resolution of the PSF by
the camera. Such condition is obtained here by a rela-
tively small numerical aperture for the optical setup
(NA.0.1). In this case, only the forward scattered light
near the axis direction contributes to the image and only
a very small part of the off-axis light gets into the
imaging system. Images of liquid droplets or opaque
discs are thus very similar in this case except in the center
of the droplet image where the refracted component of
the light near the axis leads to a brighter spot in the
center (Hovenac 1986). This difference is not restrictive
here as only the outline of the image profile and the
979
minimum grey level are considered in the image analysis
procedure as explained below.
In practice, the parameter s is introduced to adapt the
model to the experiment. Indeed, the theoretical contrast
of the images is calibrated to the experimental ones
through the determination of this parameter. The value
of s depends on the aperture of the optical setup and on
the object diameter too, but the way s is related to the
object size greatly depends on the effective aperture. The
ð1Þ small numerical aperture of the optical setup used in this
work leads to small values of s. As a consequence, this
parameter has been considered not to depend on the
object size in the remainder without noticeable loss in
accuracy.
2.2 Point spread function (PSF)
For a diffraction-limited optical system of circular
aperture under monochromatic illumination, the PSF is
given by
J1 ðak rÞ
sdl ðr; kÞ ¼ ;
ðak rÞ2
where ak is a scale parameter depending on the wave-
length k. When considering noncoherent polychromatic
light, the PSF can be modeled by a Gaussian shape
(Pentland 1987) as the result of the contribution of
numerous functions sdl(r;k) for the various wavelengths:
 
2r2
sðrÞ ¼ s0 exp  2 ; ð3Þ
v
where v is the PSF half-width and s0 is a normalization
constant. The PSF changes with the position of the
droplet in the object space. Indeed, the PSF width
optical axis: the more unfocused the object, the larger the
PSF and the more blurred the image. Nevertheless, it is
supposed that v does not depend on the image plane
coordinates (x, y), i.e., there is no spatial variation of the
optical aberrations of the imaging device in the plane (x,
PSF half-width v is only a function of z.
2.3 Image computation
Introducing Eqs. 2 and 3 in Eq. 1 yields
0 0qffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi11
ZZþ1 n2 þ g2
@1  ð1  sÞP@ AA
iðx; yÞ ¼
2ai
1

2n o
2 2
 exp  2 ðx  nÞ þ ðy  gÞ dndg: ð4Þ
v
Equation 4 is normalized and written in circular
coordinates:
980
Z ~a 1s
~ið~rÞ ¼ 1  2ð1  sÞexpð~r2 Þ qexpðq2 ÞI0 ð2~rqÞdq; ð5Þ Cmax ¼ : ð8Þ
0
1þs
 
a2 Þ ;
~imax ¼ 1; ~imin ¼ ~ið0Þ ¼ 1  ð1  sÞ 1  expð~ ð6Þ For completely opaque objects (s=0), this yields
where ~r is the nondimensional radial coordinate ~r ¼ Cmax=1 and for s=0.2, it gives Cmax=2/3 (see Fig. 3a).
pffiffiffi pffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
ffi Eq. 8 is used to determine the experimental value of s by
2r=v ¼ p 2ðx 2 þ y 2 Þ=v; ~a is the nondimensional droplet
ffiffiffi measuring the biggest value for the contrast. As
radius ~a ¼ 2ai =v and I0 is the modified Bessel function
of the first kind. explained before, it is assumed here that s does not de-
A low value for ~ a corresponds to a small object width pend on the droplet diameter. A reference contrast de-
compare to the PSF width. A small focused object or a fined as the contrast for a perfectly opaque object is
larger unfocused object can thus have the same value for obtained writing s=0 in Eq. 7:
~a: Several theoretical image profiles are shown in
Fig. 2a. The width of the image profile obviously in- 1  expð~a2 Þ
creases when the object diameter increases. For low ~a; Cðs ¼ 0Þ ¼ C0 ¼ : ð9Þ
1 þ expð~a2 Þ
the image profile presents a V-shape and when ~a in-
creases it turns to a U-shape. For a given value of ~a; the
height of the profile is controlled by the parameter s: the For an object of contrast coefficient s „ 0, the
lower s, the higher the profile. The minimum level at the contrast can be expressed as a function of s and C0 by
image center ~imin ¼ ~ið0Þ (Eq. 6) decreases with ~a and eliminating expð~a2 Þ between Eqs. 7 and 9:
reaches the limiting value ~imin ¼ s when ~ a is large enough
ð~a ¼ 2:5; s ¼ 0; 0:2 on Fig:2aÞ: On the other hand, for C0 ð1  sÞ
C¼ ; ð10Þ
lower values of ~ a; the minimum level varies between s 1 þ C0 s
and 1. thus the normalized contrast C0 can be expressed as a
function of s and C:
C
2.4 Image parameters C0 ðC; sÞ ¼ : ð11Þ
ð1  sÞð1 þ CÞ  C
The image parameters used to compare theoretical and The maximum normalized contrast C0,max=1 is ob-
experimental image profiles are now introduced. A tained for C=Cmax in Eq. 11. In the following, the
sketch for the definition of these parameters is presented normalized contrast C0 is used in place of C to express
in Fig. 2b. The image contrast C, defined by Eq. 7, is a relations without any dependence on s.
nondimensional parameter bounded between 0 and 1. A second image parameter is used to describe the grey
~imax  ~imin 1  ~imin ð1  sÞð1  expð~a2 ÞÞ level profile: it is the image half-width ~rl determined at a
C¼ ¼ ¼ : relative level l, (0<l<1). The absolute reference level ~iref
~imax þ ~imin 1 þ ~imin 2  ð1  sÞð1  expð~a2 ÞÞ
corresponding to a given relative level l is defined by
ð7Þ Eq. 12 where h ¼ ~imax  ~imin is the height of the image
profile.
The variation of C versus a~ is shown in Fig. 3a for
s=0 and 0.2. The contrast increases monotonously with
~a and reaches the maximum Cmax for ~ a&2:4: As ~imin ~iref ðlÞ ¼ ~imin þ lh: ð12Þ
tends to be s when ~a increases (see Eq. 6), the limiting
The image half-width ~rl is then defined implicitly by:
value for the contrast is:
~ið~rl Þ ¼ ~iref ðlÞ: ð13Þ

Fig. 2 Theoretical image i

profile: a profiles for different a 1 b imax
values of the nondimensional
object radius ~a and of the 0,8
contrast coefficient s. filled
a ¼ 1:12; s ¼ 0:0; filled
square: ~ iref
rl h
a ¼ 1:5; s ¼ 0:0; open
triangle: ~ 0,6
a ¼ 1:5; s ¼ 0:2; Filled
triangle: ~
~

l.h
i

diamond: ~ a ¼ 2:5; s ¼ 0:0; open 0,4

diamond: ~ a ¼ 2:5; s ¼ 0:2; imin
b definition of the relative levels 0,2

0 0
-4 -2 0~ 2 4 0 r
r
 981

Fig. 3 Image parameters versus

nondimensional object radius ~ a:
a 1 b 5
a Contrast C. filledsquare: s=0;
filled triangle: s=0.2. b Half- 0,8 4
width ~rl : filled square: l=0.25;
filled triangle: l=0.61; filled 0,6 3
diamond: l=0.77

~
C

rl
0,4 2

0,2 1

0 0
0 1 2~ 3 4 0 1 2~ 3 4
a a

As the reference level is defined relative to the image 2.5 Droplet diameter estimation
profile height, it can be easily shown from Eq. 14 that ~rl
does not depend on s: It is assumed now that s is known (s is calculated for the
biggest unblurred droplet) and that l is fixed to a given
Z þ~
a value. So, for fixed values of s and l, C0 and ~rl are
2
expðð~rl Þ Þ q expðq2 ÞI0 ð2~rl qÞdq functions of ~a only (Eqs. 9 and 14). In this set of para-
0 metric equations, the parameter ~a can be eliminated,
Z þ~
a
ð14Þ
2 yielding the direct relation between C0 and ~rl : No loss of
¼ ð1  lÞ q expðq Þdq:
0 generality occurs when dividing ~rl by ~a and taking the
inverse of the result. The ratio obtained a/rl represents
The half-width for relative levels l=0.25, 0.61 and the ratio of the object width to the measured image
0.77 are used to characterize the image profile. The width. The variation of a/rl versus C0 is shown in Fig. 4
variation of ~rl for these three levels is shown in for l=0.25, 0.61 and 0.77. The object to image width
Fig. 3b. When ~a is large enough ð~ a > 1:5Þ; the calcu- ratio increases with the contrast except for the curve
lated radius ~rl increases linearly with the object width l=0.25 presenting a maximum around C0=0.76. The
and for ~a ! 0; ~rl tends to be the half-width of the starting and ending points of the curves are (0,0) and
PSF at the relative level 1  l by definition of the (1,1) for (C0,a/rl), whatever the relative level l. Images
image width. Indeed, when ~ a ! 0; the convolution with a very low contrast correspond to unfocused ob-
product (Eq. 1) becomes an identity as o(x, y) can be jects or very small focused objects, i.e., objects of width
considered in this case as a Dirac function. The result much smaller than the PSF width ð~a ’ 0Þ: In such a case
is that the image is very similar to the PSF in such a the, image profile is flat and spreads over a large area,
case. For l=0.61, ~rl remains always slightly larger resulting in a very small value of a/rl so
than ~a: ðC0 ; a=rl Þ ! ð0; 0Þ: The ending point of the curves
(C0,a/rl)=(1,1) is reached for ~a ! 1: The U-shape
image profiles then tend to the square shape of the object
profile. It is noticeable that among the strictly increasing
curves, the curve for l=0.61 is the one that has the
largest dynamics for the values of a/rl. For relative levels
1,5 lower than 0.61, the curve a/rl=f(C0) presents a fishing
rod shape as shown in Fig. 4 for l=0.25. This explains
the fact that the classical mid level (l=0.5) was not used
here to measure the image width. For practical appli-
1 cations, the relation a/rl=f(C0) is fitted by a polynomial
of an order up to 4:
a/rl

a
¼ pl ðC0 Þ ¼ a0 þ a1 C0 þ a2 C02 þ a3 C03 þ a4 C04 : ð15Þ
rl
0,5
The polynomial coefficients ak, {k=0.4} are functions
of l. The size of the object is estimated from the mea-
surement of the parameters rl,meas and Cmeas and
0 through Eqs. 11 and 15:
0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1
C0 aest ¼ rl;meas  pl ðC0 ðCmeas ; sÞÞ; ð16Þ

Fig. 4 Variation of a/rl versus normalized contrast C0 for different

whereas classical approaches consider focused objects
relative levels of thresholding l. filled square: l =0.25; filled triangle: only, corresponding to Cmeas . Cmax, Eq. 16 is used to
l=0.61; it filled diamond: l=0.77 express the radius of unfocused objects, corrected from
982

the out-of-focus effect. The depth of field of the droplet
sizing setup is thus increased. The limiting parameter is
given by the minimum contrast Cmin. The minimum
contrast measurable with a given optical setup depends on
the threshold used to detect the droplet images. One
should note that images are constituted of black elements
over a white background so that negative transition are
considered and that the threshold level must be lower than
the white background level. This threshold level must be
chosen sufficiently low to prevent detection of false image
(i.e., noise) but also sufficiently high in order to detect the
maximum number of unfocused and small droplet images.
The tradeoff leads to Cmin . 0.1 in our case.
The minimum diameter measurable with this tech-
nique is defined by fixing a minimum number of pixel
per droplet. We fixed this number to NPixmin=10 pixels
for the lowest relative level l=0.25 which represents the
smallest droplet image area to be considered. The min-
imum diameter is thus deduced from Eq. 16:
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
4NPixmin
dmin ¼ p0:25 ðC0 ðCmin ; sÞÞ : ð17Þ
pR2
The minimum contrast measurable induces also a
maximum value for v for a given object size a.
According to Fig. 3a, Cmin . 0.1 is obtained for
~amin ’ 0:5: It comes from the definition of ~
a:
l=0.77 and l=0.25 does not varies strongly with a~ and
seems to reach a limit value for ~a > 1:5: Let us define the
nondimensional half-width difference D~r by Eq. 19:
D~r ¼ ~r0:77  ~r0:25 : ð19Þ
It can be observed in Fig. 5 that D~r linearly increases
with the contrast C0.
The minimum value is 0.676 for C0=0, and the
maximum is 1.021 for C0=0.988. As for the estimation
of the droplet diameter, the relation between D~r and C0
is fitted by a polynomial of order 3:
D~r ¼ pr ðC0 Þ ¼ b0 þ b1 C0 þ b2 C02 þ b3 C03 : ð20Þ
Knowing the coefficient s, the PSF half-width can be
estimated from the measured parameters Drmeas and
Cmeas and Eqs. 11 and 20:
vest ¼ Drmeas =pr ðC0 ðCmeas ; sÞÞ: ð21Þ
An estimation of v is now available for each mea-
surable droplet, v being associated to the droplet loca-
tion along the optical axis. v is an increasing function of
the distance of the drop from the focus plane, so a cri-
terion independent of the droplet diameter can thus be
defined to take into account only the droplets located in
a given volume:

vmax ¼ vðCmin ¼ 0:1Þ ’ 2:8a: ð18Þ vest\vmax : ð22Þ

As the PSF width v increases with the distance z from
the focus plane, this implies that the biggest droplets are
measurable over a larger domain of space than the
smallest ones. Therefore, if all the measurable droplets
are counted in the drop size distribution, the population
of the smallest droplets will be underestimated. To
overcome this problem, a correction of the droplet
counting based on the estimation of the droplet focusing
is proposed hereafter.
2.6 Droplet focusing estimation
This is illustrated in the Sect. 4.
3 Image analysis
The analysis is a 3-stage process. The first stage corre-
sponds to a global image pre-processing called normal-
ization. The second stage consists in detecting and
separating the different droplets on the pictures. The last
stage consists in applying the imaging model to each
detected droplet in order to extract the droplet charac-
teristics. All the computations needed for the processing

An estimation of the droplet focusing can be obtained

through the determination of the PSF half-width v as it 1
is directly related to the position of the droplet in the
object space along the optical axis (z). The grey level 0,8
gradient on the outline of the image is strongly related to
~
∆r

the PSF width, due to the convolution product. In fact, 0,6

when the object width is a lot bigger than the PSF width
ð~a  1Þ; the width of the image outline is directly linked 0,4
to the PSF width. In these particular conditions,
ð~a  1Þ; the gradient criteria can be used to discriminate 0,2
focused and unfocused droplets. For smaller or more-
blurred droplets, gradient criteria are not effectual any- 0
more. So, instead of calculating the grey level gradient at 0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1
the outline of the image, the imaging model is used to C0
link the difference between image widths at two different
pffiffiffi
levels l1 and l2 and the PSF half-width. It can be seen on Fig. 5 Variation of D~r ¼ 2ðr0:77  r0:25 Þ=v versus normalized
Fig. 3b that the difference between half-widths ~rl for contrast C0

Fig. 6 Normalization effect: Example of an ultrasonic spray image
before a and after b normalization
of the images have been done on a standard personal
computer using C programming language.
3.1 Illumination normalization
In the imaging model, a uniform background image is
considered. In real applications, the light distribution in
the background of a backlight configuration setup is
rarely uniform. The reason is that the light source, or
more rarely the CCD camera response, are not spatially
homogeneous. As black over white images are consid-
ered and as the response of the CCD camera to the input
light is linear, a normalized image, expressed by Eq. 23,
can be computed
P ði; jÞ  PO ði; jÞ
Pn ði; jÞ ¼ bPnorm ; ð23Þ
PB ði; jÞ  PO ði; jÞ
where 0<b<1, P(i, j) is the grey level of pixel (i,j),
PB(i, j) is the grey level of the background image
(obtained without any object in the view field) and PO(i,
j) corresponds to the noise level of the grabbing setup
and is obtained with the camera objective closed (the
obscurity image). Pnorm is the mean background level of
the normalized image. The effect of the normalization is
illustrated on Fig. 6. The objects are more easily iden-
tified from the background after normalization.
The coefficient b is used to correct the fluctuation of
the global intensity level in the background when the
light source is not temporally stable. A reference level is
needed for the fluctuation to be corrected. This level is
determined in two different ways depending on the im-
age to be normalized. If there is a ’clear’ region in the
pictures where droplets never appear, the mean grey
level Lclear of this region is compared to the mean grey
level LB determined on the background image for the
same region and the correction coefficient is given by
b=LB/Lclear.
983
If there is no clear region in the image, a global
technique based on the grey level histogram of the image
is used. Histograms of back-lighted spray pictures gen-
erally present one or two principal modes. The mode
corresponding to the higher grey level is relative to the
background pixels. The most-populated grey level Lpeak
in the background is expected to be statistically robust.
Thus, b is given by the ratio Lpeak(PB)/Lpeak(P).
3.2 The droplet detection
To characterize the droplets, each droplet is individu-
ally localized on the pictures and is surrounded by a
mask. This is usually done by a classic threshold ap-
plied to the picture at a given level Lth. The threshold
level Lth determines the minimum contrast Cmin of the
droplet detected by this method. This is a correct ap-
proach if all the droplet images to be analyzed have a
higher contrast than Cmin. In fact, the smaller the
droplet or the more distant from the focus plane the
droplet is, the more blurred the image of the droplet as
predicted by the model. The smallest or most unfo-
cused droplets have a low contrast and can be lost by
the classic thresholding technique. To increase the
sensitivity of the detection, a second thresholding
technique based on wavelet transform has been devel-
oped. This second technique allows the detection of
grey level local variations that indicates the presence of
a droplet image.
The wavelet transform can be seen as a spectral
analysis, like the Fourier’s transform, but spatially
localized. The wavelet transform of a function is the
result of the linear convolution of this function with a
particular function called a wavelet (Eq. 24).
Z
WW;f ðt; qÞ ¼ f ðXÞWt;q ðXÞdX: ð24Þ
The function f to be analyzed represents here the
normalized grey level picture: f(X)=Pn(i, j) (X=(i, j) is
the pixel position).
984

Fig. 7 Thresholding techniques: a Wavelet image of the normalized luted by a Gaussian filter. The second derivative of the
image in Fig. 6b. b Wavelet-based two-level image. c classically filtered grey level function corresponds to the part of
thresholded image
the picture where grey level concavity or convexity are
found. This is the case for the grey level distribution
The wavelet Yt,q is given by: on the outline of the droplet image. The smaller the
 
1 Xt width of the grey level variation zone (blurred zone),
Wt;q ðXÞ ¼ pffiffiffi W ; q > 0: ð25Þ the higher the absolute value of concavity or convex-
q q
ity. In other words, the second derivative is all the
The function Y is called the mother wavelet function more important since the droplet is well-focused. In
and is an oscillating function of zero mean and localized order to detect the droplet interface, the parameter q is
in space. This function is dilated and shifted in space as chosen to be of the order of the width of the blurred
indicated by Eq. 25: the vector t is the shifting parameter droplet interface on the pictures. So, as q is fixed, each
and q is the dilatation parameter. The larger q, the lower pixel t = (i, j) of the grey level picture is associated to
the spatial frequency analyzed by the wavelet. The a wavelet coefficient WY,f(t,q), giving a wavelet image
choice of the mother wavelet depends on the informa- as illustrated in Fig. 7a. Negative values of WY,f (t,q)
tion to be brought out. correspond to pixels in a convex grey level zone, typ-
To analyze droplet images, the Mexican hat has been ically the external side of the droplet interface. Positive
chosen: values correspond to the concave zone (i.e., internal
2p   2 side) and nil values to uniform zones of the picture,
WðrÞ ¼ pffiffiffi 1  r2 er =2 : ð26Þ typically the normalized background. A threshold on
3
the wavelet image is used to localize the droplet
This function corresponds to the second derivative interface on the picture when the interface is particu-
of a Gaussian function. Thus, the convolution of the larly blurred. The detection of small out-of-focus drops
grey level image with the wavelet function corresponds is achieved through the use of only one value for the
to the second derivative of the image, firstly convo- scale parameter q. In the other case, when a large

depth of field is chosen, several wavelet transforms can
be performed with different values of q and then
combined in order to detect a larger range of drop
focusing. The two-level image obtained is then
combined to the one obtained with the classical
threshold.
Examples of wavelet-based and classically threshol-
ded images are shown in Fig. 7b, 7c respectively. The
classical threshold technique detects the larger droplets
correctly but misses some of the smaller ones. The
detection of unfocused droplets is improved by the
wavelet-based thresholding and the contribution of this
technique is essentially positive as it only adds droplets
that would not be detected by the classical technique.
The image resulting from the union of the two thres-
holding techniques is scanned by a recursive labeling
algorithm in order to localize individually each identified
droplet. A morphological dilatation is then applied to
each object (set of connected pixels, i.e., of same label
level) to define a surrounding mask for the calculation of
local quantities.
3.3 Droplet analysis and sub-pixel contour extraction
Each droplet has to be isolated from the surrounding
droplets in order to be individually analyzed. An illus-
tration of this process is shown in Fig. 8. The picture in
Fig. 8a corresponds to the box drawn on the picture in
Fig. 6b. Figure 8b represents in black, the mask of the
droplet studied, in bright grey its dilated surface and in
dark grey, the dilated surface of the other droplet masks.
A picture corresponding to the droplet studied with its
environment but without its neighboring droplets is ex-
tracted from the original image (Fig. 8c). A two-level
image (Fig. 8d) is then computed by thresholding the
local image at level Pref. The threshold level Pref is
determined by Eq. 27
Pref ¼ Pmin þ lðPmax  Pmin Þ; ð27Þ
where the minimum grey level Pmin, and the most-pop-
ulated grey level Pmax which corresponds to the back-
ground grey level are obtained from the local grey level
histogram (Fig. 9a). The relative level l was defined
above in Eq. 12. The local contrast Cmeas of the droplet
is also computed from the grey levels Pmax and Pmin by
analogy with Eq. 7:
Fig. 8 Droplet cutoff from the
background. The image is
analyzed locally a to determine
the mask b surrounding the
droplet and to isolate the droplet
c. The surrounding droplets do
not interfere with the local two-
level image d
985
Pmax  Pmin
Cmeas ¼ : ð28Þ
Pmax þ Pmin
A nonhomogeneous background level can be induced by
largely unfocused droplets in front of or behind the
measurable droplets. These unfocused droplets diminish
the local illumination of the droplet nearer from the
focus plane but this is considered by the computation of
the local contrast Cmeas. The pixel-contour of the two-
level image (Fig. 8d) is not smooth due to the discreti-
zation of the picture, so a sub-pixel edge detection
algorithm is used to obtain the contour of the droplet.
To do so, the grey level gradient is computed for each
pixel of the contour by two Sobel operators giving the
first order derivation of the grey level following the
horizontal and vertical directions. The gradient vector is
used to reach the real value of the threshold level in a
sub pixel coordinate system. This is illustrated in
Fig. 9b.
3.4 Droplet size parameters and volume reconstruction
The previous section showed the ability of the algorithm
to detect droplets and to isolate them and also to obtain
the droplet edge description in sub-pixel coordinates.
Added to the image contrast Cmeas, three other image
parameters are used to characterize the droplet. The
generalized radius of the droplet image is based on the
area A0.61 inside sub-pixel contour at relative level
l=0.61. The definition of this radius is based on the area
of a circular shape:
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
A0:61
rmeas ¼ : ð29Þ
p
When droplets are spherical, Eqs. 16 and 29 lead to the
correct estimation of the droplet radius. On the other
hand, for nonspherical droplets, Eq. 29 introduce a bias
in this estimation. To compensate for this, a volume-
based radius rv is defined following the 3D shape esti-
mation of the droplet proposed by (Daves et al. 1993).
The volume of the drop is calculated by considering
slices of the 2D shape of the image, cut perpendicularly
to the principal axis of inertia (see Fig. 10a). For each
slice, the elementary volume is defined by the volume of
a disc of diameter equal to the width of the slice and of
thickness equal to the height of the slice. The droplet
986

Fig. 9 Local grey level

histogram a and sub-pixel
contour b of the droplet image a 100 b
in Fig. 8c
Pmin Pmax
75

pixel count
50

25

0
0 50 100 150 200 250
grey level

volume is obtained by summation of the elementary of the image in the plane and rmax and rmin are the
volumes. maximum and the minimum distances from this point to
For a prolate spheroid shape having its principal axis the contour. This parameter measures the uniformity of
in the image plane, the volume-based radius leads to the the mass distribution around the center of gravity G and
good estimation of the droplet volume, whereas the it increases from 0 to ¥ as the image shape becomes less
surface-based radius introduce an error which increases and less uniform.
indefinitely as the ellipticity of the image decreases from The sphericity parameter Sp (Eq. 32) quantifies the
1 to 0. The ellipticity is defined in the next section. For likeness between the droplet shape and the spherical
an oblate spheroid shape, the error introduced on the shape. The area of the droplet image SI is compared to
estimated volume by the volume-based radius is also the circular surface SC of same area centered on G (see
lower than the one obtained from the surface-based ra- Fig. 11b). For a spherical droplet, we have Sp=0.
dius.
Finally, to estimate the droplet focusing, it is nec- ðrmax  rmin Þ
gðuniformityÞ ¼ ; 0 < g < 1; ð31Þ
essary to compute the radius difference Drmeas based on rmeas
the areas A0.77 and A0.25 obtained from the sub-pixel
contours at the relative levels 0.77 and 0.25, respec- areaðSI [ SC  SI \ SC Þ
Sp ðsphericityÞ ¼ ;0 < Sp < 2; ð32Þ
tively (Fig. 10b): areaðSI Þ
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi
A0:77 A0:25 Lmin
Drmeas ¼  : ð30Þ eðellipticityÞ ¼ ; 0 < e < 1; ð33Þ
p p Lmax
perimeterðSC Þ
uðirregularityÞ ¼ ; 0 < u < 1: ð34Þ
perimeterðSI Þ
3.5 Morphological parameters
The ellipticity parameter e measures the stretching of
Four nondimensional morphological parameters are the droplet (Eq. 33). It corresponds to the ratio of the
defined to qualify the droplet shapes. These parameters width to the length of the rectangle that most closely
also define a morphological space in which different encompasses the droplet image (see Fig. 11c). The last
shape families can be identified. parameter / called irregularity (Eq. 34) is representative
The definition of the uniformity parameter g (Eq. 31) of the folds of the shape interface and is based on the
is illustrated in Fig. 11a where G is the center of gravity perimeter of the image.

Fig. 10 Droplet size

parameters: a volume
reconstruction and b sub-pixel
contours used to determine the
reference areas (:l=0.25,:
l=0.61;: l=0.77)
 987

Fig. 11 Morphological parameter definition: a uniformity, b sphe- estimation of the PSF width must also be experimentally
ricity and c ellipticity. The black point corresponds to the gravity validated. Finally, the influence of the image shape on
center of the shapes
the corrections included in the model must be evaluated.
The same optical imaging setup was used for all the
For a circular shape, the four parameters verify: experiments presented in this paper. A noncoherent light
source (Nanolite - HSPS) of very short duration (.10 ns)
g ¼ 0; Sp ¼ 0; e ¼ 1; u ¼ 1: ð35Þ
is used in a backlight configuration to illuminate the
For some classes of shape family, a relationship between spray. A Sony XC-8500 CCD camera (763·581 pixels) is
these different morphological parameters exists. For used with a long working distance microscope (Iscooptic)
example, the elliptic shape family is governed by the of NA.0.1. The results presented in this section
relations expressed by Eqs. 36, 37 and 38: was obtained with a magnification giving a resolution
R=1,260 pixels/mm. The field of view is thus
1e 606·463 lm2 and the minimum PSF half-width at the
ge ¼ pffiffi ; ð36Þ
e focus plane is vmin=4 lm. The Table 1 summarizes the
rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi rffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffiffi! resolution, field of view and corresponding minimum PSF
4 e 1 half-width for the different configurations used in this
Sp;e ¼ arcsin  arcsin ; ð37Þ paper.
p 1þe 1þe

1
ue ¼   ð38Þ
3 ð1 þ eÞ 1
pffiffi  :
4 e 2
The elliptic shape family is then represented in the
morphological space (g, Sp, e, /) by a curve defined by
Eqs. 36, 37 and 38. Near elliptical droplets are identified
through a morphological filter retaining droplets of
morphology (g, Sp, e, /) near to (ge, Sp, e, /e). Of
course, other morphological filters can be defined for
other morphological studies.
4 Calibration procedure
The formation of the image on the detector was modeled
in Section 2. This model must be compared to the
experiment. To do so, several hypotheses have to be
validated by a calibration procedure. First, the correc-
tion law (Eq. 16) used to estimate the object diameter
must be verified and if necessary, calibrated to take into
account specific aspects of the setup not included in the
model. The localization of the droplet based on the
4.1 Calibration of the diameter estimation
To calibrate the sizing procedure, a reticle on which
calibrated discs are engraved was placed in the object
space. The diameters of the analyzed discs was between
10 and 100 lm. The reticle was translated along the
optical axis by 50 lm steps. For each disc of known size
and each position of the reticle, the contrast Cmeas, the
image radius rmeas and the radius difference Drmeas were
measured. The contrast coefficient s was determined
from the maximum contrast measured on the largest
object and yielded s=0.013. The measured contrast
Cmeas is corrected by use of Eq. 11 to give the normal-
ized contrast C0. The true disc radius a divided by the
measured radius rmeas is represented in Fig. 12 as a
function of the normalized contrast C0. The image ra-
dius is corrected from the variation of the lateral mag-
nification with the position of the object along the
optical axis. This variation is induced by the fact that the
objective is not telecentric.
The scattering of the points for low values of C0 is not
due to a limitation of the model but to an underesti-

Table 1 Resolution (R), field of view (FV) and PSF half-width in the focus plane vmin of the different optical configurations used in the
experiments

Experiments R(pix/mm) FV (lm2) vmin(lm)

Calibration 1,260 606·463 4

Ultrasonic spray 640 1,193·908 5.5
Diesel spray 1,270 560·457 3
988
mation of the image radius. Effectively, for C0.0.1–0.2
the grey level profile is flat and the slope at the edge is
very low. The measurement of the image radius is thus
very sensitive to the threshold level Pref. In the case of
low contrast, the determination of Pmin is not so robust
and local noise in the profile can induce an underesti-
mation of Pmin, and thus of Pref and rmeas.
The dotted curve in Fig. 12 corresponds to the pre-
diction of the model given by Eq. 15. It is clear that the
experiment deviates from the model. The radius mea-
sured at relative level 0.61 for a given contrast is, in fact,
larger in the experiment than in the theory. It is sup-
posed that the difference is due to an experimental PSF
slightly different from the Gaussian. A polynomial
regression of order 3 is then computed on the experi-
mental points to obtain a calibrated correction law in
place of the one predicted by the model. This regression
is used hereafter to estimate droplet sizes.
4.2 Calibration of the focusing estimation
The PSF form and width have not been measured di-
rectly. In fact, for each position of the reticle in the
object space, the PSF half-width is estimated through
Eq. 21. A different value for vest is then obtained for
each disc and for each position of the disc along the
optical axis (z). The results are reported in Fig. 13 for
the variation of vest versus z. The focal plane is located
where vest reaches its minimum value: z is set to 0 for this
position. The estimated PSF width increases linearly
with z when defocusing increases. This is a typical
behavior of a microscope objective. A linear regression
of the data leads to the following estimation of the PSF
half-width:
1 between the points for the PSF width estimated from the
0,8
0,6 10 µm
a/rmeas
15 µm
20 µm
30 µm
0,4 40 µm
60 µm
100 µm
experiment
0,2 model
0 4.3 Effect of the object shape
0 0,1 0,2 0,3 0,4 0,5 0,6 0,7 0,8 0,9
C0
Fig. 12 Calibration of the sizing procedure. The coefficients
of the polynomial in Eq. 15 are (a0,a1,a2,a3,a4)=(0.20441,
2.7503, 4.9341, 4.7441, 1.8137) for the model and
(a0,a1,a2,a3,a4)=(0.39654, 1.1025, 0.84537, 0.26805, 0) for the
experiment
0,06
10 µm
0,05 15 µm
20 µm
30 µm
40 µm
0,04 60 µm
χest (mm)
100 µm
0,03
0,02 ∆z
0,01
0
-1 -0,5 0 0,5 1
z (mm)
Fig. 13 Calibration of the PSF width. The depth of field
(Dz . 400 lm) is defined by the choice of the maximum PSF
width (vmax=10 lm)
vest ðmmÞ ¼ 0:0041 þ 0:031jzjðmmÞ: ð39Þ
Discrepancies increase progressively when |z| in-
creases. Here again, the experiment deviates progres-
sively from the theory. We can explain this by a
progressive change of the shape of the experimental
PSF. Indeed, the real PSF for an unfocused object re-
sults from the convolution of the focused PSF and a
defocalization PSF that can be modeled by geometrical
optics (Stokseth 1969). Nevertheless, as narrow depths
of field are considered here in order to measure correctly
the smallest droplets, the deviation observed between the
results for the different discs is low.
It can be seen from Fig. 13 that fixing vmax is equiv-
alent to choose the limits for the depth of field
Dz=zmaxzmin, which is considered to be independent of
the object size in a first approximation. The discrepancies
disc of different diameters induce an uncertainty in the
determination of the limits of the depth of field. For
vmax=10 lm, it yields a depth of field Dz.380±140 lm.
However, we must keep in mind that without any sorting
of the drop images, the depth of field varies from 0.6 to
more than 2.3 mm for objects of size between 10 and
40 lm. Fixing the depth of field by this way does not
prevent from the effect of image overlapping considered
in Section 4.4.
1
The imaging model was developed for circular-shaped
objects but non spherical droplets can be analyzed
through the morphological analysis of the images. The
influence of the shape of the object has been tested
numerically to evaluate the model. Synthetic images of
elliptic discs with 0.1 £ e £ 1 have been filtered by a
 989

Gaussian of variable width to simulate the defocusing 1 Ap

effect. The blurred images were analyzed by the sizing
and defocusing estimation procedures. The results are
reported in Fig. 14. Area-based radii are considered
here. The relative error (aesta)/a is plotted versus the
ellipticity for different nondimensional object sizes
ð~a ¼ 1; 1:5; 2; 2:5; 3Þ in Fig. 14a. Obviously, the error
begins to be significant for ellipticity lower than 0.5, but
there is not a clear effect of the nondimensional radius ~a
on this error.
The relative error for the estimated PSF width
(vestv)/v increases when e decreases (Fig. 14(b)) as it
does for the size estimation, but the relative error on the
PSF width is one order of magnitude greater than the
relative error for the diameter estimation. Nevertheless,
the error on the determination of v is not very important
as it is used only to define the measurement volume. For
a droplet not localized near the maximum unfocused
position, given by v . vmax, the estimation of v has no
incidence on the measurement, although it is true that a
droplet localized near the maximum unfocused position
could be rejected by an error on the estimation of v due
to a pronounced elliptic shape.
4.4 Limit in droplet concentration
The imaging process leads to the projection of the
droplet contour on the image plane. This projection
converts the 3D distribution of drops in the object space
to a 2D distribution of droplet images on the image
plane. For the image to be analyzable, the droplet image
concentration on the image plane must not be too high.
The projected area Ap can be estimated by the mean-
surface diameter D20 of the droplet size distribution.
Indeed, if N is the number of droplets in the measure-
ment volume then:
Z 1
pD2 pD220
Ap ¼ N fn ðDÞdD ¼ N : ð40Þ
0 4 4 experiment
The number of drops in the measurement volume
(Lx Ly Lz) is related to the drop concentration Cv: N=Cv
Lx Ly Lz. The drop concentration can thus be expressed
by:
Cv ¼ : ð41Þ
Lz pD220 =4 Lx Ly
The last term Ap/(Lx Ly)=scov represents the ratio of the
total projected surface of the droplet images over the
surface of the image plane. This ratio can be greater than
the effective surface image concentration when image
overlapping occurs. In the case of the Diesel spray
application characterized by a very small droplet size
distributions (D20 .5 lm), and for scov=0.25 and
Lz= 2 mm for a~30 lm, Eq. 41 gives a drop concen-
tration of 5000 droplets/mm3. In this estimation, Lz is
the maximum depth for detection of the biggest droplets
(see Calibration of the focusing estimation).
High droplet concentrations lead to high values of
scov and result in overlapping effects which are treated by
the following ways:
– Partially overlapping images are separated by a spe-
cific module of the morphological analysis which uses
the sub-pixel contour and the grey level gradient along
the contour to dissociate different images (Yon 2003;
Yon and Blaisot 2004).
– Totally overlapping process is dealt with by a model
for the correction of the size distribution observed
when scov is too high (scov ’ 0.5) (Yon 2003; Yon and
Blaisot 2004). The missed droplet population is esti-
mated considering a random distribution of droplets
in space. In the case of applications to Diesel sprays, it
was shown that as soon as images are analyzable, the
correction of the apparent drop size distribution be-
comes negligible. The correction obtained by this
model is significant in the case of wide drop size dis-
tributions, the probability for a given drop to be
covered by another one being in this case not negli-
gible.
4.5 Testing of the drop sizing on a well-controlled
The validation of the new drop sizing technique was
done comparing its performances with two other
diagnostics: a diffraction-based granulometer (Spray-

Fig. 14 Validation of the sizing

a and defocusing b estimation
a 0,06 b
procedures for elliptic objects. 0,8
0,05
open circle ð~a ¼ 1Þ; filled
triangle ð~
a ¼ 1:5Þ; filled inverted 0,04 0,6
(χest - χ)/χ
(aest - a)/a

triangle ð~
a ¼ 2Þ; filled square
ð~a ¼ 2:5Þ; filled circle ð~
a ¼ 3Þ: 0,03
Relative error on the diameter 0,4
estimation is quite small. The 0,02
error for the estimation of the
PSF width is greater but it has 0,2
0,01
little impact on the
measurement accuracy 0 0
0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1 0 0,2 0,4 0,6 0,8 1
ε ε
990
tech–Malvern) and a PDPA (Dantec). An ultrasonic
atomizer (POLYSPRAY) fed with water was chosen
to produce a well-atomized and diluted spray with
very low drop velocities. The working frequency of the
atomizer is 47 KHz and the mass flowing rate is
4.2 mg/s. The measurement point is 15 mm below the
injector nozzle for the three techniques. The optical
settings of the imaging system are given in Table 1.
The linear regression for the estimation of the PSF
half-width gives vest (mm)=0.0056+0.014 |z| (mm) in
this configuration. It was verified with the PDPA
measurements that there was no correlation between
the drop size and the drop velocity. Temporal distri-
butions obtained from the PDPA can thus be directly
compared to spatial distribution obtained from dif-
fraction or image analysis. The results are presented in
Fig. 15. In order to compare the droplet size distri-
butions, the spatial filtering is applied to prevent an
overestimation of the biggest droplets. The maximum
PSF half-width was fixed to vmax=20 lm leading to a
depth of field of 2 mm. In order to compare mea-
surements to other techniques, the morphological fil-
tering of the elliptic objects (see Sect. 3,
Morphological parameters) is also applied to retain
only near-spherical droplets. The image-based distri-
bution obtained with these two filters is noted FSM in
Fig. 15 and the nonfiltered distribution is also re-
ported (F0). The effect of the filtering on the overes-
timated population of biggest drops is clear, the FSM
distribution is shifted towards smaller drop diameters.
The three distributions obtained from the PDPA, the
diffraction technique and the image-based technique
with spatial and morphological filters (FSM) are very
similar. The SMD obtained from each technique are
equal to 30.3, 34.9 and 35.11 lm, respectively with
diffraction, PDPA and image analysis.
0,05
0,04
0,03
fv(1/µm)
0,02
0,01
0
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90
Drop diameter (µm)
Fig. 15 Comparison of the image-based drop sizing technique with
PDPA and diffraction techniques. FO—image-based granulometry
without filtering, FSM—image-based granulometry with spatial
and morphological filtering
5 Application to the diesel spray
5.1 Experimental setup
The Diesel spray is well known to be hardly measur-
able as a consequence of high liquid speeds and high
concentrations encountered in such a flow. Further-
more, the spherical hypothesis is still to be proved in
this spray. The capability of the image-based granu-
lometer to analyze sprays in severe conditions is thus
tested on a Diesel spray. No comparison with other
diagnostics will be presented in this section due to the
limitation of these diagnostics for this kind of appli-
cation. A 200 lm diameter single orifice Ganzer
injector is placed vertically and fed by a pneumatic
pump to provide fuel pressures Pi=60 MPa. The
nozzle length is 800 lm giving a L/D ratio of 4. This
injector is not representative of multi-hole commercial
injector but it is used to produce one Diesel jet of
similar properties. The fuel is injected at ambient
pressure and temperature (P0=100 kPa, T=20C).
The injection lasts 2 ms and the needle lift position is
measured as a function of time. Experiments have
been done with Diesel fuel.
There is an hydraulic delay between the command
time t0 and the start of injection tsi. At low injection
pressure this delay is not stable. In order to avoid the
jitter between t0 and tsi, the start of injection is detected
with a photodiode placed at the nozzle exit. The light
source is driven at a time ti synchronized with tsi.
The PSF half-width of the optical configuration used
for this application is given by vest(mm)=0.0031 +
0.022 |z| (mm). The minimum measurable diameter
calculated from Eq. 17 is dmin= 2.2 lm. The maximum
PSF half-width vmax for the spatial filter given by Eq. 18
is vmax .3 lm for dmin= 2.2 lm but the maximum value
was fixed to vmax=5 lm in order to enlarge the mea-
surement volume and thus to increase the droplet
counting. This yields to the depth of field Dz .170 lm
FSM and results in a slight underestimation of the smallest
F0
Diffraction droplets (d<5 lm). The size of the measurement volume
PDPA
is thus 0.56·0.46·0.17= 43·103 mm3. For each mea-
surement point, 700 images of the spray were recorded
to produce smoothed size distributions. The average
number of droplets counted in each drop distribution
ranges from 10,000 to 80,000 depending on the mea-
surement location and the filters applied.
Table 2 Measurement locations and name convention for the tes-
ted positions
100 110 120 130 140 150 Name Pi (MPa) X (mm) Y (mm)
60ul 60 30 -3
60ur 60 30 3
60dl 60 60 -3
60dr 60 60 3

6 Results
The drop size distributions are measured 30 mm and
60 mm from the nozzle tip, for two symmetrical radial
positions (see Table 2 and Fig. 16a). Measurement times
are fixed during the quasi stationary period of the
injection, i.e., ti=1911 ls for X=30 mm and ti=1991 ls
for X=60 mm. Typical Diesel spray images are shown in
Fig. 16b–e. Focused, slightly unfocused and largely
unfocused droplets are visible on these images.
Volume-based drop size distributions are presented in
Fig. 17. For each measurement position, the direct dis-
tribution (F0) is compared to the one obtained with the
application of the spatial filter (FS). The morphological
filter is not applied anymore as the results are not
compared with other granulometers in this section. The
expected effect of the spatial filter, i.e., the correction of
the overestimation of the population of the big drops, is
clearly seen in Fig. 17a for the point 60ul and also in
Fig. 17c and 17d.
Without spatial filtering, drop size distributions on
both sides of the jet at a given downstream position are
quite similar. When the spatial filter is applied, a dis-
symmetry is observed for X=30 mm (Fig. 17a and 17b).
In fact, the distribution for 60ur is bi-modal with FS, as
a result of a well-localized phenomenon. It was noticed
in previous studies on the same injector, that for this
particular location, the Diesel spray is characterized by a
temporal oscillation of the droplet density. It is though
that this could be the consequence of periodical droplet
clusters or lateral jet flapping generated by cavitation,
appearing in a small defect located on the right side of
the nozzle outlet. The difference between the drop size
distribution with and without spatial filtering can thus
be due to the fact that this cavitation-induced phenom-
enon is three-dimensional as mentioned by (Soteriou
2001) and well-localized.
The drop size distributions at 60 mm from the
nozzle tip (60dl and 60dr) are clearly mono-modal
distributions centered around 12 lm. The small drop-
lets (d<8 lm) that are dominating upstream have
nearly disappeared 30 mm below. This could be due to
the fact that the dense parts of the jet are composed
of bigger droplets than the dilute parts. The reduction
of the population of the small droplets (d<8 lm)
when applying the spatial filter can thus be due to the
fact that the focus plane is located in a dense region
surrounded by more dilute parts of the spray. In
particular, unfocused drops should be located in a
dilute region, i.e., in a region where the small
drops are dominating. The spatial filter suitably
eliminates those small unfocused droplets from the
distribution.
The morphological analysis has been used to char-
acterize the mean drop shape as a function of the drop
size. The results for 60ur and 60dr are presented in
Fig. 18. The measurement points 60ur and 60dr was
chosen for the difference observed in the size distribu-
991
tion. The mean value of the four shape parameters are
computed for all diameter class.
The standard deviation for e and / is also presented
on this figure (error bars).
The mean shape of the drops seems nearer from the
spherical shape at the center of distribution modes as
indicated by the minimum for Sp and g and the
maximum for e and /. However, the standard devi-
tation of the shape parameters are higher at the ex-
trema of the drop size distribution. This could simply
results from less robust mean values caused by less-
populated classes. It must be noticed that parameters
Sp and g, which must be near from zero for spherical
drops, also has a higher range of values (resp. [0, 2]
and [0, ¥]) than e and /. The standard deviations for
Sp and g (resp. .0.2 and .0.3) are thus higher also
than for the two other parameters (arround 0.1) and
were not represented for clarity of the Fig. 18. The
morphological analysis indicates that when the drop
size distribution presents two modes, the shape
parameters seem also to present the same number of
extrema as shown for 60ur in Fig.18a. The most-
populated diameter classes seem thus to be well-
atomized due to the near spherical shape of these
drops.
A temporal analysis of the Diesel jet has also been
performed during the quasi-stationary part of the
injection for the position 60ur and over the entire
injection time at the other side of the spray, at the po-
sition 60dl. The temporal evolution of the SMD and of
the morphological parameters is presented in Fig. 19.
Only a weak variation of the SMD is observed during
the injection time. Except for the first and last 360 ls of
the injection when the droplet diameters are a little lar-
ger, the mean diameters during the injection is about
5 lm for the two positions considered (X=30 and
60 mm).
At the two distances from the injector, the temporal
similarity observed between the mean diameters is no
longer seen for the morphological parameters. Indeed, a
time dependence of the four morphological parameters
is observed at the point 60ur associated to X= 30 mm.
This dependence is clearly seen from the irregularity
parameter / whose stabilization is observed during the
quasi-stationary setting up. This temporal dependence is
not observed anymore at the second point studied (60dl,
X=60 mm). The droplet morphology relaxes along the
downstream position towards spherical shape, i.e., g and
Sp decreases toward 0 and e and / increases toward 1, so
the atomization process is still in progress between
X=30 mm and X=60 mm.
It can also be noticed that the behavior of the injector
is not that reproducible. This is particularly evident for
the mean shape parameters at the point 60ur and around
2,000 ms which are not of the same order than for the
analysis at a fixed time (see Fig. 18). This particular
behavior shows the sensitivity of the drop shape
analysis.
992

Fig. 16 Location of the

measurement points along the
Diesel plume (a) and example of
Diesel spray images for each
position (b)–(e)

Fig. 17 Droplet size distributions: a 60ul, b 60ur, c 60dl, d 60dr. F0:
no filter applied, FS: spatial filtering. Measurement locations are
indicated in Table 2 and in Fig. 16
Finally, to illustrate what extra contribution the drop
shape analysis can add to the spray analysis, we reported
in Fig. 20 some drop images recorded at the end of the
Diesel injection with the corresponding value of the drop
shape parameters. The drop shapes of the too upper
rows correspond to the kind of shape commonly
encountered in the Diesel spray. The four lower ones are

a b
Fig. 18 Droplet size distributions with spatial filter and mean drop
shape parameters for each diameter distribution class. Error bars
indicate the standard deviation for e and /: a 60ur, b 60dr
Fig. 19 Temporal variation of the SMD and of the morphological
parameters versus injection time for Pi=60 MPa: filled circle
30 mm downstream (60ur) and · 60 mm downstream (60dl) the
nozzle outlet. The continuous line stands for the needle lift curve
Fig. 20 Images of drops encountered at the end of the injection
time
993
specific shapes of the end of injection. These nonspher-
ical droplets, usually rejected or not correctly charac-
terized by classical techniques, can however lead to the
production of unburned particles in the combustion
process, due to their big size.
We believe that a wise classification of the shapes
based on the morphological parameters, can help
atomization analysis. Indeed, primary and secondary
breakup regimes can be classified through the shape of
the liquid element being broken or formed (see Liu and
Reitz 1996 for example). Our challenge now is to asso-
ciate quantitative values to the shapes subjectively
associated to each breakup regime.
7 Conclusion
A new approach to spray-sizing by image analysis is
presented. It is based on the modeling of the image
formation. The image model has been used to define
criteria for the correction of the apparent size of an
unfocused drop and for the determination of a mea-
surement volume independent of the drop size.
Image-based drop sizing techniques was also used to
analyze the shape of the drops. Four morphological
parameters have been proposed here to qualify the drop
shapes. Morphological filtering of the spherical or
elliptic droplets is also applied for comparison with
other techniques.
One of the remaining limits of the image-based sizing
technique is the effect of image overlapping. However, it
was found that for a narrow drop size distribution, the
effect could be neglected.
The image-based drop sizing technique was first ap-
plied to an ultrasonic spray. Results are compared to
diffraction-based and PDPA measurements. The three
techniques are in agreement, giving similar the drop size
distributions.
The new drop sizing technique was also submitted to
more severe conditions, in an application to a Diesel
spray. A very low SMD (.5 lm) is found during the
quasi stationary period of the injection. The results re-
veal also the presence of two modes in the drop size
994
distributions at 30 mm from the nozzle outlet. It is be-
lieved that the bimodal drops size distribution could be
the consequence of a periodical phenomenon, generated
by cavitation appearing in a small defect located on the
right side of the nozzle outlet.
The small SMD is almost constant during the injec-
tion and along the downstream position. However, the
morphological analysis allows us to observe that the
mean shape of the droplets is not stable during the
injection near the injector, whereas it is nearly constant
in time 60 mm downstream from the nozzle outlet. As
could be guessed, it was shown that the drop shape
evolves spatially towards the spherical shape. The
characteristic time for drop size stabilization is found to
be shorter than the characteristic time form drop shape
relaxation. Some energy is still working on the liquid–
gas interface or is not totally dissipated, leading to the
deformation of the drops. This might have to be con-
sidered when evaporation and combustion processes are
involved. The objective of this work is now to proceed to
the classification of the shapes, based on the morpho-
logical parameters, in such way that primary and sec-
ondary breakup regimes can be classified through a
quantitative approach.
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