Variable Nozzle

The project objective was to design a whole mechanism of a mini variable flow nozzle for the Fluid Dynamics laboratory. The device was meant to redirect the fluid flow, at the same time control the outlet area of nozzle.

The main strategy was arranging vanes around the exhaust pipe in a way that they cover each other as well as being able to change their direction to form different modes of nozzle from convergent to divergent. A difficult challenge during the design process for me, was overlapping the vanes by changing the whole direction of nozzle. This challenge, forced me to invent a special mechanism to control the direction and outlet area of nozzle at the same time using four mechanical actuators, and a special central actuator between vanes and the main exhaust.