This paper presents a computer aided procedure for the design of laminar proportional fluid amplifiers and gain blocks. The procedure is based upon a fundamental analysis of the flow regimes in an amplifier. With the aid of a computer, amplifier static and dynamic characteristics, required in control system design, may be determined as a function of geometry and fluid properties. The procedure is illustrated and evaluated by comparison of predicted design and experimentally measured performance. The procedure has been applied to individual elements designed by three different organizations, multistage gain blocks, and laminar jet rate sensor preamplifiers. The results of the procedure are shown to be quite accurate over a wide range of amplifier geometries (eleven different amplifiers with aspect ratio from 0.25 to 3 – a range of 12 to 1 – and nozzle sizes from 0.5 to 10 mm) and operating fluids (both air and oil). Experimental measurements were within 10 percent of the design predictions for amplifier gains, operating resistances, and bandwidth for all examples investigated.
Analytic studies and experimental measurements of the velocity of sound in a two-phase mixture of gas and liquid were performed to provide a basis for analyzing performance of fluid computing networks with multiphase fluids and to stimulate the application of such conditions to fluid computation. In particular, the work was directed toward the investigation of mixtures with a large percentage of gas, a regime where little experimental data has been available. The analytic studies include a review of the classical approach to wave propagation and attenuation, which pertains to a homogeneous mixture, and a development of an analytic model consisting of layers of gas and liquid normal to the flow direction for the non-homogeneous case. Calculations based on this model show that the speed of sound and attenuation in a two-wave mixture having high gas content depend on the detailed nature of the mixture. This is borne out by the experiment.
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