The motivation for a supersonic propulsion system is primarily the faster travel times that such a system would enable, but several conflicting requirements must be satisfied in order for a nozzle configuration to be viable. In short, any candidate nozzle configuration must be capable of generating high thrust levels across a large flight envelope, and must also effectively integrate into a supersonic airframe. However, noise requirements for operating over land and at commercial airports present a significant challenge to designing an acceptable nozzle.;A facility has been designed to evaluate the performance of supersonic propulsion nozzle concepts. The facility has been made operational and a plug nozzle has been tested at a wide range of conditions. The specific tools developed for the facility include a suite of pressure instrumentation, a traversing rake system for measuring temperatures and pressures in the exhaust plume, and a six-axis force measurement system.;The facility has demonstrated reliable and consistent operation at all the test conditions investigated. In terms of facility performance, the conditions entering the test article were seen to be uniform in each stream at the test article interface. Also, the force data from the plug nozzle shows the expected trends. The efficiency and thrust coefficient of the plug nozzle is evaluated, and it is seen that the formulation of thrust coefficient typically used in rocket applications is more appropriate for this particular nozzle. Also, the discharge coefficient is evaluated and seen to have the expected trend, although the actual values are somewhat low. Finally, plume data is shown to illustrate that the plume rake traversing system is functional, as well as to verify the mixing assumptions used in the analysis of the nozzle.
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