Analytic design of laminar proportional amplifiers

The modeling of a laminar proportional amplifier (LPA) is discussed, taking into account aspects of general LPA geometry, basic assumptions, the supply characteristic, the input characteristic, the control channel resistance, the jet-edge to downstream control-edge resistance, an analysis of amplifier jet deflection gain and dynamics, and the frequency response estimate. Attention is given to the input impedance, the centered jet impedance, the deflected jet impedance, aspects of bias sensitivity, the operating Reynolds number range, the output characteristics, the transfer or gain characteristic, the geometric configuration sensitivity, and the contamination sensitivity. A description of experimental results is given and a design example of multiple-element staging is provided.