A concentric pneumatic nebulizer (CPN) and a custom designed flow focusing nebulizer (FFN) are characterized. As will be shown, the classical Nukiyama-Tanasawa and Rizk-Lefebvre models lead to erroneous size prediction for the concentric nebulizer under typical operating conditions due to its specific design, geometry, dimension and different flow regimes. The models are then modified to improve the agreement with the experimental results. The size prediction of the modified models together with the spray velocity characterization are used to determine the overall nebulizer efficiency and also employed as input to a new Maximum Entropy Principle (MEP) based model to predict joint size-velocity distribution analytically. The new MEP model is exploited to study the local variation of size-velocity distribution in contrast to the classical models where MEP is applied globally to the entire spray cross section. As will be demonstrated, the velocity distribution of the classical MEP models shows poor agreement with experiments for the cases under study. Modifications to the original MEP modeling are proposed to overcome this deficiency. In addition, the new joint size-velocity distribution agrees better with our general understanding of the drag law and yields realistic results.

A concentric pneumatic nebulizer (CPN) and a custom designed flow focusing nebulizer (FFN) are characterized. As will be shown, the classical Nukiyama-Tanasawa and Rizk-Lefebvre models lead to erroneous size prediction for the concentric nebulizer under typical operating conditions due to its specific design, geometry, dimension and different flow regimes. The models are then modified to improve the agreement with the experimental results. The size prediction of the modified models together with the spray velocity characterization are used to determine the overall nebulizer efficiency and also employed as input to a new Maximum Entropy Principle (MEP) based model to predict joint size-velocity distribution analytically. The new MEP model is exploited to study the local variation of size-velocity distribution in contrast to the classical models where MEP is applied globally to the entire spray cross section. As will be demonstrated, the velocity distribution of the classical MEP models shows poor agreement with experiments for the cases under study. Modifications to the original MEP modeling are proposed to overcome this deficiency. In addition, the new joint size-velocity distribution agrees better with our general understanding of the drag law and yields realistic results.