Turbopump Cavitation Tools

The next generation liquid rocket systems envision novel designs for turbopumps that can operate at high suction speeds (i.e. low inlet pressures), and can be throttled over a wide range of low, off-design flow conditions. This is an extremely demanding flow regime where performance loss and damage from cavitation instabilities can be catastrophic since they can generate large amplitude pressure fluctuations. However, the ability of current analytical or CFD tools to reliably predict unsteady cavitation dynamics is not mature particularly for cryogens where temperature fluctuations can couple with the pressure variations.. The innovation proposed here is to extend current capabilities to analyze mean solutions and head drop-off, to an unsteady framework that can predict amplitudes and frequencies of dynamic pressure loads within a cryogenic fluid environment with temperature fluctuations. A key aspect of this proposal is an extensive testing program that will be conducted in the Phase II effort to provide dynamic load magnitudes in a regime where thermal effects are important Hence, the resulting product will be a well-validated and reliable analysis tool, CRUNCH CFD®, that can be used predict unsteady, off-design performance of liquid rocket turbopumps.