Unshrouded Centrifugal Turbopump Impeller
The ratio of rocket engine thrust to weight is a limiting constraint in placing more payload into orbit at a low cost. A key component of an engine's overall weight is the turbopump weight, Reducing the turbopump weight can result in significant engine weight reduction and hence, increased delivered payload. There are two main types of pumps: centrifugal and axial pumps. These types of pumps can be further sub-divided into those with shrouds and those without shrouds (unshrouded pumps). Centrifugal pumps can achieve the same pump discharge pressure as an axial pump and it requires fewer pump stages and lower pump weight than an axial pump. Also, with unshrouded centrifugal pumps (impeller), the number of stages and weight can be further reduced. However. there are several issues with regard to using an unshrouded impeller: 1) there is a pump performance penalty due to the front open face recirculation flow; 2) there is a potential pump axial thrust problem from the unbalanced front open face and the back shroud face; and, 3) since test data is very linu'ted for this configuration, there is uncertainty in the magnitude and phase of the rotordynamics forces due to the front impeller passage. The purpose of the paper is to discuss the design of an unshrouded impeller and to examine the design's hydrodynamic performance, axial thrust, and rotordynamics performance. The design methodology will also be discussed. This work will help provide some guidelines for unshrouded impeller design. In particular, the paper will discuss the design of three unshrouded impellers - one with 5 full and 5 partial blades (5+5). one with 6+6 blades and one with 8+8 blades. One of these designs will be selected for actual fabrication and flow test. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is used to help design and optimize the unshrouded impeller. The relative pump performance penalty is assessed by comparing the CFD results of the unshrouded impeller with the equivalent shrouded impeller for a particular design. Limited unshrouded - versus - shrouded impeller data from the J-2 pump is used to anchor the CFD. Since no detailed impeller blade force data is available, axial thrust and rotordynamic force predictions are based on the CFD model. For the axial thrust, the impeller front flow passage axial force is integrated from the CFD results and compared to the equivalent shrouded impeller axial force. For the rotordynamics forces, the fluid reaction forces are computed from unsteady flow CFD results using a moving boundary method; the rotor- shaft is moved at several whirl-to-speed frequency ratios to extract the rotordynamics coefficients.