Conceptual design and prototyping of a fast-acting shutter valve system for turbomachinery short-duration blowdown wind tunnels

This project aims at developing and prototyping an upgraded version of an existing shutter valve for two different compression tube turbomachinery wind tunnels in use at the Von Karman Institute. The current solution has been analyzed in detail, a list of requirements has been produced for the new solution and a literature review has been conducted to define a state of the art for fast-acting valve solutions in multidisciplinary applications. Concepts for the solution have been analyzed and the performance of the most promising one has been modeled through a MATLAB script. The model takes into account thermodynamic effects of the pneumatic actuator powering the system, inertia, kinematics and dynamics of components. As a result, contact forces and reaction forces for different components have been evaluated and used to size some parts of the system and of a scaled down prototype version.