Aerodynamic Curtains Design for Gas Flow Laser Cavities

A significantly improved flow-field can be achieved by designing supersonic aerodynamic jet curtain devices in the laser cavity. In the analysis of these devices special attention has been devoted to reduce the disturbances in the cavity flow-field and to preserve the optical beam quality. A judiciously “tailored” version of the generalized-mesh Eulerian APACHE code has been used for this purpose. This version includes all the important physical models for accurate prediction of the system transients, but it possesses also greater problem geometry flexibility and is simpler to use and reasonably economic for extensive parametric and sensitivity studies. Computations of the combined laser cavity/curtain flow-field of various geometrical configurations have been successfully applied to the study of aerodynamic curtains for several kinds of gas flow lasers. Typical examples of computed results for an HF chemical laser arc presented and discussed. General conclusions of practical importance are drawn.