Choked Flow - Thin-plate Orifices

Thin-plate Orifices

The flow of real gases through thin-plate orifices never becomes fully choked. The mass flow rate through the orifice continues to increase as the downstream pressure is lowered to a perfect vacuum, though the mass flow rate increases slowly as the downstream pressure is reduced below the critical pressure. Cunningham (1951) first drew attention to the fact that choked flow will not occur across a standard, thin, square-edged orifice.