The purpose of this work was to investigate, both experimentally and numerically, the spray behavior and atomization characteristics of dimethyl ether (DME) at high fuel temperatures and under various ambient conditions. In order to compare the theoretical and measured spray characteristics of DME fuel, macroscopic characteristics such as spray tip penetration and spray cone angle were investigated using spray visualization system with a heating system. DME atomization performance was calculated under various conditions from KIVA-3 V code and studied via analysis of the overall Sauter mean diameter (SMD) map, which is related to ambient gas temperature, ambient pressure, and fuel temperature. DME spray was found to exhibit behavior that differs from diesel spray under atmospheric condition. However, at high ambient pressure conditions, DME and diesel sprays display similar behavior. At ambient atmospheric condition, the spray cone angle of DME fuel is larger than that of diesel spray due to the occurrence of flash boiling. Variation in DME fuel temperature had little effect on spray tip penetration and spray cone angle characteristics. An increase in ambient air temperature caused an increase in DME spray cone angle due to an enhancement of the flash boiling effect. However, the DME spray cone angle showed a decreasing trend at high ambient pressure conditions when the ambient air temperature was increased. This was due to the disappearance of flash boiling and the evaporation of droplets at the exterior of the spray cone. In the overall SMD map, the increase of the ambient gas temperature and fuel temperature induced the increase of DME overall droplet size. On the other hand, the ambient gas pressure have slightly influenced on the overall SMD at a low ambient gas temperature and low fuel temperature, but the effect of the ambient gas pressure is significant at high ambient gas temperature and high fuel temperature. At high ambient gas temperature, the increase of the ambient gas pressure causes the increase of the overall SMD. At high DME fuel temperature, the decrease of the ambient gas pressure induces the increase of the overall SMD. (c) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.