• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.9 no.3
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• pp.1-9
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• 2005

An acoustic analysis of a fuel-rich gas generator for the drive of a turbopump in a liquid rocket engine has been performed and the length of a duct has been determined by comparing the resonant frequency of unstable acoustic modes to simulate an flight model gas generator, A practical short-length simulating duct has been determined by considering 1 or 2 wavelength of the unstable modes. Length adjustment of duct to turbopump can be a method to suppress a combustion instability problem by decoupling of acoustic mode and combustion characteristics. This method has been set up and validated with acoustic analysis and hot firing tests.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.15 no.3
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• pp.40-46
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• 2011

A velocity-compounded(VC) turbine of the 75ton turbopump was developed as an improved performance backup for a single-rotor base-line turbine. Curvic coupling was used for the connection between rotors and shaft. High temperature torsion test and spin test was performed for the curvic coupling design validation. Aerodynamic performance test revealed that the developed VC turbine can generate 20.5% higher specific power than the base-line turbine. It has been measured that $1^{st}$ rotor of the subject turbine generates 74.1% of total power at design operating condition.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2005.11a
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• pp.235-239
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• 2005

A 30-tonf-class fullscale thrust chamber for the application to a LEO SLV has been combustion tested over the wide ranges of a mixture ratio and a chamber pressure. The thrust chamber designed for an open cycle engine with a turbopump was tested with a ablative combustion chamber instead of a regenerative chamber to first evaluate its performance and function. The test results revealed stable combustion characteristics. The hardware survived the harsh environment and showed very sound functional characteristics. The estimated combustion efficiency of the chamber turned out to be 95% and a specific impulse at sea level was estimated as 254sec, which are comparable to or above the predicted design values.

• 유체기계공업학회:학술대회논문집
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• 2006.08a
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• pp.523-526
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• 2006

A series of hydraulic and cavitation tests are performed in water environment in order to verify the hydraulic and cavitation performance of three types of LOX pumps. All the performances of the pumps are found to be satisfied with each design requirement. In the hydraulic tests, the head and efficiency are increased as the gap between floating ring seals and the impeller shoulder is decreased. In the cavitation tests, some pumps show decrease in the cavitation performance as the flowrate of the pump is decreased.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.15 no.1
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• pp.36-40
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• 2012

The magnitude of the axial thrust acting on pump bearings has a great influence on the operational reliability and service life of a pump for turbopumps. In the present study, radial vanes are introduced to the pump casing to control the axial thrust by changing the cavity pressure between the impeller and the casing. To investigate the effect of the vanes on the axial thrust of the pump, experimental and computational studies were performed with and without the vanes. It is shown that the vanes reduce the cavity pressure by preventing the flow from rotating with the impeller. Experimental and computational results show similar trend for the axial thrust difference between two cases with and without the vanes. The results show that the cavity vanes are very effective in controlling the magnitude of the axial thrust.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2012.05a
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• pp.117-122
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• 2012

A blisk with rotor shroud is usually adopted in LRE turbine to maximize its performance. However it experiences severe thermal load and resulting damage during engine stating and stop. Shroud splitting is devised to relieve thermal stress on the turbine rotor. Structural analysis confirmed the reduction of plastic strain at the blade hub and tip. However, split gap at the rotor shroud entails additional tip leakage and results performance degradation. In order to assess the effect of shroud split on the turbine performance, tests have been performed for various settings of shroud split. For the maximum number of shroud splitting, measured efficiency reduction ratio was 2.65% to the value of original shape rotor.

• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.5 no.1
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• pp.1-9
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• 2012

In the turbopump inducer of a liquid propellant rocket engine, cavitation is affected by acceleration that occurs during an actual launch sequence. Since cavitation instabilities such as rotating cavitations and cavitation surges are suppressed during launch, it is difficult to obtain data on the influence of acceleration on cavitation instabilities. Therefore, as a fundamental investigation, in the present study, a three-blade cyclic cascade is simulated numerically in order to investigate the influence of acceleration on time-averaged and unsteady characteristics of cavitation that arise in cascade. Several cases of acceleration in the axial direction of the cascade, including accelerations in the upstream and downstream directions, are considered. The numerical results reveal that cavity volume is suppressed in low cavitation number condition and cavitation performance increases as a result of high acceleration in the axial-downstream direction, also, the inverse tendency is observed in the axial-upstream acceleration. Then, the regions in which the individual cavitation instabilities occur shift slightly to a low-cavitation-number region as the acceleration increases downstream. In addition, in a downstream acceleration field, neither sub-synchronous rotating cavitation nor rotating-stall cavitation are observed. On the other hand, rotating-stall cavitation occurs in a relatively higher-cavitation-number region in an upstream acceleration field. Then, acceleration downstream is robust against cavitation instabilities, whereas cavitation instabilities easily occur in the case of acceleration upstream. Additionally, comparison with the Froude number under the actual launch conditions of a Japanese liquid propellant rocket reveals that the cavitation performance will not be affected by the acceleration under the current launch conditions.

• Aerospace Engineering and Technology
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• v.4 no.1
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• pp.143-149
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• 2005

To evaluate the hydraulic and cavitation performance of a fuel pump for a liquid rocket engine, performance tests of the pump, which consist of hydraulic tests and cavitation tests, were conducted in water environment with various condition. In the hydraulic tests, the head, efficiency and volute pressure distribution of the pump are found to follow the conventional similarity rule, whereas the secondary flow pressure shows a small deviation from the similarity rule. As the floating gap is constricted, the efficiency of the pump improves and the secondary flow pressure decreases. However, the inner diameter of bypass line orifice does not show clear relationship with the pump efficiency. In the cavitation tests, measurements of the head and the NPSH indicate that the pump shows better cavitation performance as the rotational speed of the pump increases.

• Journal of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers
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• v.11 no.4
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• pp.59-66
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• 2007

In this paper, experimental investigation results of the effect of partial admission ratio on the performance of axial turbine was presented. A supersonic impulse turbine of gas generator cycle liquid rocket engine turbopump was used for the test. for experimental purpose, a nozzle block, in which total 14 number of axi-symmetric convergent-divergent nozzles are arranged circumferentially, was designed and manufactured. Partial admission ratio was controlled by changing the number of active nozzles. High pressure air was used as working medium for the test. The experimental result revealed that the performance of the supersonic impulse turbine does not much affected by the partial admission ratio for supersonic impulse turbine.

• Proceedings of the Korean Society of Propulsion Engineers Conference
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• 2011.11a
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• pp.830-834
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• 2011

In this study, we performed three-dimensional CFD analysis to investigate the effect of the rotor blade sweep of a partial admission supersonic turbine on the stage performance and the flow field. The computations are conducted for three different sweep cases, No sweep(NSW), Backward sweep(BSW), and Forward sweep(FSW), using flow analysis program, $FLUENT^{TM}$ 6.3 Parallel. The results show that BSW model give the effect on the reducing of mass flow rates of tip leakage and the increasing of t-to-s efficiency.