A new design is proposed for dc plasma spray gas shroud attachments. It has been found experimentally that the performance of a conventional conical gas shroud is not satisfactory due to the entrainment of the cold air inside the gas shroud. Numerical simulations confirmed this finding. Parameters such as the cone angle and the main gas flow rate can significantly influence the flow pattern inside the nozzle, resulting in air entrainment and formation of a circulation zone at the exit region. A new design is proposed which can considerably improve the performance of shrouded nozzles. The superior performance of the proposed design has been demonstrated by numerical simulation. The new design is based on a modification of the conical shape by optimizing the profile of the nozzle from a conical shape with a constant angle to a streamlined configuration. The optimized shape was obtained from an analysis of the streamlines of fixed angle nozzle.