The Loris turbine was originally designed with the intent of providing active mass flow control for an internal combustion (IC) engine. In a conventional IC engine the mass flow is controlled by use of a throttle. The design intent of Loris was to use the power generated from the pressure drop over the turbine, to drive a generator that subsequently fed power to an onboard battery.

Loris is a conventional 2-D axial turbine that operates with a Reynolds number of ca. 20'000. At its’ design point, the turbine runs at 78’000 rpm and has a pressure ratio of 2. Variable inlet guide vanes (IGVs), with a variable nozzle range is 69.1°,  provide, for a given pressure ratio, a wide range of mass flow rates. The Loris test rig is equipped with instrumentation to provide performance data. This instrumentation includes pressure transducers, hot-carrier thermal resistors and mass-flow sensors.