Evaluation of an event-based camera for time-resolved imaging of primary atomization in an air-assist atomizer

The current work discusses the demonstration of an event-based (EB) camera for time-resolved imaging (10,000 frames/sec) of the primary atomization of a canonical air-assist atomizer. Experiments were performed simultaneously with conventional high-speed and event-based cameras, enabling us to quantitatively assess the performance of event-based cameras in spray imaging (particularly near-field liquid jet breakup) applications. Three atomization breakup regimes are considered: columnar, bag, and multimode. Dynamic mode decomposition (DMD) was implemented to analyze the acquired instantaneous time-dependent images from both cameras and assess their performance in extracting turbulence statistics of the primary atomization. The computed DMD frequency spectrum and spatial modes of liquid breakup characteristics from the images recorded from both cameras are comparable, highlighting the potential of event-based cameras in extracting coherent structures in the primary atomization zone and their spectral contents. However, in some instances, the EB camera underpredicts the DMD modes compared to high-speed cameras, and the reasons for these discrepancies were explained. Finally, the limitations (e.g., event saturation) of event-based cameras in the context of primary atomization imaging were also discussed.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00348-025-04009-w.