Engineering topics
Publications and source records attributed to Meng, S. Y..
Cavitation reduced while suction increased. Tests conducted with model liquid-oxygen turbopump using water as pumped fluid confirms performance improved by "tandem" arrangement of blades. Findings expected to apply to other pumps having two adjacent rotor rows.
New mathematical formula calculates difference between angle of impeller blade and angle of flow. Formula used for inducers of mixed-flow pumps. With formula, calculations made more quickly and accurately than previously available formulas.
Simple accurate model of centrifugal or rocket engine pumps provides information necessary to design inducer backflow deflector, backflow eliminator and prewhirl jet in jet mixing zones. Jet design based on this model shows improvement in inducer suction performance and reduced cavitation damage.
Modeling procedure approximates inlet transition zone (blade leading edge to blade throat) of diffuser pump as two-dimensional cascade, properties of which are well known. Model applied to stators as well as rotors. Procedure much faster than previous methods.
Conformal mapping transforms radial cascade to axial cascade. Report describes analysis of pressure distributions on radial diffuser geometries within Space Shuttle main and preburner pumps. Analysis uses modified version of Douglas-Neuman (D-N) procedure for two-dimensional axial cascades.
Blockage predicted for all components including inducers, impellers and diffusers. Pump performance predicted by semiempirical method shows excellent agreement with test results in Space Shuttle main-engine highpressure fuel turbopump. Comparisons of pump efficiency show equally good agreement of calculated values with experimental ones. Method improves current estimation methods based solely on subjective engineering judgment.
Transonic swept wings are analyzed as a lifting-line problem under a small-disturbance approximation. Basic concepts and principal results of the asymptotic theory are discussed. The study focuses on straight oblique wings and V-shaped swept wings, of which the local centerline curvature can be equated to zero. The three-dimensional (3-D) perturbation of the nonlinear component flow admits a similarity flow structure but requires that all wing sections are generated from a single airfoil profile; the reduced 2-D problems in this case are solved only once for all span stations. Examples of solutions involving high subcritical and slightly supercritical component flows are demonstrated and compared with surface pressure data from 3-D computer codes based on the full-potential equation (FLO 22). Except in the neighborhood of leading edges, where the small-disturbance assumption breaks down, and in the vicinities of wing tips and the symmetry plane, where neither the theory nor the 3-D codes may claim full validity, reasonable agreement is consistently found. The explicit results from the upwash analysis, along with the similarity flow structure, provides a rational approach to the control of 3-D effects in transonic aerodynamic design studies.
The paper presents asymptotic methods for high-aspect-ratio wings in transonic flow developed for straight unyawed wings and for oblique wings. They show that the three-dimensional mixed-flow calculations may be reduced to solving a set of two-dimensional problems at each span station; the development of this theory and the related computational studies are reviewed. Differences between the piloted (oblique) wing, the swept-back wing, and the swept-forward-wing in the induced upwash are discussed; examples of similarity solutions are demonstrated for high subcritical and slightly supercritical component flows, and comparisons made with relaxation solutions of a full potential equation. The examples include oblique and symmetric swept wings, and the adequacy of the existing full-potential computer code is examined.
Three-dimensional corrections to the nonlinear mixed flow admitted by a high-aspect-ratio swept wing of practical interest are analyzed by solving a perturbation problem and matching its solution to that of an outer flow. The latter is identified with a linear solution involving a lifting line, but the centerline of the planform is not required to be straight and unyawed. The existence of a similarity in the three-dimensional flow structure for a certain oblique-wing geometry is demonstrated, along with a solution to the reduced problem in a high-subcritical case.