AN INVESTIGATION ON A SUPERSONIC FLOW CO CHEMICAL LASER

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Small signal gain coefficients of a supersonic flow CO chemical laser were measured using a shock tunnel facility. The visual observation of the chemical luminescence from various reactions in the laser cavity were also performed and it was shown that the development of the mixing layer in the downstream direction is very gradual as was demonstrated by the numerical calculation using the thin shear layer approximation. The numerical calculation showed that the small signal gain coefficients begin to decrease at a location where the mixing layer is still a small portion of the total flow width. Therefore, much smaller nozzles than those of the present experiment are desirable in order to attain a higher average gain. The predicted distribution of the gains along the flow agreed fairly well with the experimental results. It was clearly demonstrated that the presence of the boundary layers and the magnitude of the wall catalysis play decisive roles in determining the laser performance.