DESIGN AND TESTING OF DE-LAVAL (SUPERSONIC) NOZZLE

Final year Mechanical Engineering students of Don Bosco College of Engineering, Fatorda, Goa, Prakash Kamble, Anup Gaonkar, Janmenjay Sawant, Subham Yadav and Adarsh Anil Kumar have successfully completed the project titled “Design and testing of De Laval Nozzle for Subsonic Flow” under the guidance of Prof. Chetan Gaonkar. The project was co guided by Prof. Avil D’Sa.

De Laval nozzle is a mechanical device which is used to convert the thermal and pressure energy into useful kinetic energy and used in rockets or air breathing engines to produce the desired thrust to gain lift. It is also used in De Laval turbine to accelerate the steam to full speed and in Magneto hydrodynamic (MHD) system to generate electricity. The project aims to study the pressure, temperature and velocity of flow characteristics across varying cross sections of the nozzle. The nozzle was analyzed theoretically, experimentally and by Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD).

The fabrication and testing of the test setup was carried out at Marine Electrical Agencies, Sancoale Goa. Mr. K Sasindran Nair and Mr. Ajoy R. Raj, Managing Partners provided the necessary help. The project was partly sponsored by Goa Instruments Industries Pvt. Ltd.

The project has won 1^st prize in Academic Project category (Mechanical Engineering) in Kshitij 2017 at DBCE.