The conical-spray injector is capable of achieving lean mixture with high homogeneity in the cylinder for diesel Premixed charge compression ignition (PCCI) engine with advanced injection timing. To better understand the cavitating flow inside the conical-spray injector, numerical simulations have been conducted by using a mixture multiphase model and a full cavitation model in this study. The results indicate that the cavitation evolution significantly affects the liquid sheet thickness and velocity at nozzle exit, which further change the spray angle and droplet Sauter mean diameter (SMD) dramatically. Based on the cavitation distribution inside the nozzle, the cavitating flow inside the conical-spray nozzle can be classified into four regimes with no cavitation, cavitation inception at inlet, developing cavitation at nozzle exit and super cavitation respectively. The extension of cavitation to nozzle exit in the super cavitation regime significantly improves the fuel atomization by increasing the injection velocity and decreasing the thickness of the liquid sheet. A cavitation map for the conical-spray injector has been developed by sweeping the ambient pressure and injection pressure simultaneously. It is found that the phenomenon of super cavitation only occurs in a narrow region where ambient pressure is very low. Therefore, the start of injection timing should be kept well before top dead center (TDC) to ensure the occurrence of super cavitation inside the nozzle in order to provide more homogeneous fuel/air mixture for diesel PCCI engines. (C) 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.