The Design and Fabrication of a Small Highly Instrumented Counterrotating Turbine Rig

Abstract

The paper describes some of the design solutions that were adopted in the realization of a small two shaft, counterrotating turbine rig. The turbine, for a small space engine technology upper stage liquid propellant rocket turbo pump system, was only 100mm tip diameter with a correspondingly small annulus height. Detailed flow measurements were provided by 3 axis actuators at inlet and outlet of the working section. Torque and Power were measured on each shaft using Radio Frequency (R.F.) telemetry torquemeters. A modular design allowed the rig to be rebuilt rapidly in one and two stage configurations with different blade sets. This enabled the effect of changing turbine configurations to be studied.

The Application of Counter‐Rotating Turbine in Rocket Turbopump

“…In 1984, Narou [3] of ISAS presented the idea of application of counter-rotating turbopump on upper-stage LOX/LH2 rocket engine. In a research of NASA ACE project (advanced chemical engine), Huber and Veres [4][5][6] design a counter-rotating turbine for the upper-stage rocket engine. They take fullscaled experiments upon the turbine, and the experimental data accord well with the theoretical prediction.…”