Design and tool anchoring for a 120-kilonewton expander cycle rocket engine liquid oxygen turbopump

Abstract

As part of a German nationally funded research programme “TARES,” a turbopump initiative has been started in recent years within Airbus DS GmbH. The aim of this study is to design a liquid oxygen (LOx) turbopump assembly (LOx-TPA) for a 120-kilonewton thrust class expander cycle rocket engine. To realize this objective, Airbus DS GmbH builds on in-house heritage, notably the turbopumps of the P111 and the H20 staged combustion engines. This experience serves as input for the design of the 120-kilonewton LOx turbopump. The current paper details the fluidic design of the turbopump, including the design philosophy and the anchoring on the heritage hardware. Discussed are the pump and turbine predesign starting from the configuration trade-off, the preliminary design, the flow path and blade design, and the design of inlet/outlet and the volute. Finally, the performance (nominal and off-design) is characterized by means of three-dimensional (3D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations.

A preliminary design study for an expander liquid oxygen turbopump

“…Predesigns have been made for the whole pump section to obtain a rough idea of the expected size and performance of the machine. A more detailed discussion on dedicated baseline pump design is given in [11]. The impeller stage suction characteristics prescribe the need for an inducer to provide su©cient inlet pressure to the radial stage.…”

“…It is divided into two domains: the stator domain with 500 000 cells and the rotor domain with 900 000 cells, both resolving a single blade. The results of this redesign work are presented in more detail in [11].…”