Numerical Studies on the Inducer/Impeller Interaction of a Liquid Rocket Engine Turbopump System

액체로켓용 터보펌프 인듀서/임펠러 상호작용에 대한 연구

The hydraulic performance analysis of a pump system composed of an inducer and impeller for the application on turbopumps has been performed using three-dimensional Wavier-Stokes equations. A simple mixing-plane method and a full interaction method are used to simulate inducer/impeller interactions. The computations adopting two methods show almost similar results due to the weak interaction between the inducer and impeller since the inducer outlet blade angle is rather small. But, because the inducer and the impeller are closely spaced near the shroud region at the interface, flow angles at the impeller inlet show different results between two methods. Thus, the full interaction method predicted about $2\%$ higher pump performance than the mixing-plane method. And the effects of prewhirl at the impeller inlet are also investigated. As the inlet flow angle is increased, the head rise and the efficiency are decreased. The computational results are compared with experimental ones. The computational results at the design point show good agreements with experimental data. But the computation was found to under-predict the head rise at high mass flow rates compared to the experiment, further study must be followed in terms of the computation and experiment.