Patent ID: 7738694

Claim:
A method of calibrating a fuel nozzle optical patternation system, the method comprising: (a) positioning a master nozzle in the fuel nozzle optical patternation system, the master nozzle identified in a nozzle family as having desired spray characteristics for use as a physical template against which other nozzles of the family are compared and evaluated; (b) obtaining a computer readable image record of a cross-section of a spray of the master nozzle in a planar laser sheet generated by the system; (c) processing data in the image record to determine a point in the image record as a virtual origin of the spray of the master nozzle, with reference to a fixed spatial origin of the system; and (d) calibrating the system in testing other nozzles of the family by using the point of the virtual origin derived from step (c) instead of the fixed spatial origin of the system as a reference point of a fuel nozzle optical patternation performed in the system.