Improved Iodine Injection, Mixing and Pressure Recovery

The primary objective of CUA's Phase II work will be to investigate innovative iodine injection concepts for the COIL that improve mixing at higher total pressures, as well as perform a laser demonstration. During Phase I, CUA designed, fabricated, and tested a flexible experimental system that shows fast iodine mixing and will be used extensively in Phase II to investigate multiple concepts. The results of the Phase I research laid the foundation for developing a highly-advanced COIL iodine injection scheme for improved pressure recovery in Phase II. During Phase I, our team partners UIUC and UNM performed and analyzed cold flow PLIF experiments to examine the mixing character of a candidate method for injecting iodine. This research lead directly to designs that will be fabricated and tested extensively with detailed diagnostics to evaluate each design’s performance attributes in Phase II with a goal of 250 torr pressure recovery within the COIL cavity while maintaining flow uniformity both in species mixture and density. Use of the well-calibrated and economical COIL facility at UIUC will allow a variety of advanced concepts to be implemented and examined in detail in both cold flow and hot flow lasing experiments.