The Condensation of Nitrogen in a Hypersonic Nozzle

A small, stainless steel, two-dimensional source flow nozzle supplied with bottled nitrogen was used for the condensation investigation. It was found that the nitrogen supersaturates approximately 15°K or 1.2 Mach numbers when expanded from stagnation conditions of 70°F and pressures of 8.21 and 16.15 atmos. A numerical method for solving the equations of motion with the aid of the experimental data allows the computation of the fluid temperature during the condensation process. The addition of small amounts of carbon dioxide reduced the degree of supersaturation obtainable with bottled nitrogen.