In the present paper, the influences of nozzle's geometric parameters on the flow and the cavitation characteristics within injector's nozzle have been numerically investigated on basis of a high-pressure common-rail DI diesel engine. For obtaining more beneficial information, five essential parameters (the pressure difference on the nozzle, circular bead of nozzle's inlet, orifice coefficient, the ratio of nozzle's length to orifice's diameter, and the roughness of orifice's inner wall) have been investigated. The variation regulations of the flow and the cavitation characteristics induced by the mentioned parameters have been observed and analysed in terms of the distributions of essential physical fields (including statistic pressure field, velocity magnitude field, turbulent kinetic energy field, mass transfer coefficient field, and vapour's volume fraction field) and the variation regulations of crucial physical parameters (including mass flow rate, flow coefficient, average vapour's volume fraction, average flow velocity at orifice's outlet, and average turbulent kinetic energy at orifice's outlet). The main results obtained in the present investigation have illustrated how the cavitation occurs, develops and extinguishes within nozzle; meanwhile, how each geometric parameter affects the flow and the cavitation characteristics within nozzle have been explored. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.