Elucidation of flow distortion caused by the turbopump turbine manifold

Abstract

In the present study, circumferential and spanwise flow distortion inside the turbine manifold of a turbopump is investigated by experiments and numerical simulations. The frequency of the flow distortion generated from the carvature of a casing causes oscillations by matching the character frequency of the turbine rotating blades. In this experiment, a newly designed full-pressure tube (kiel probe) which can measure in the effective range: ±45deg is used. As a result of experiments, it is clarified that the flow distortion in a turbine manifold can generate the exciting force with many frequency components, which can be attributed to the manifold design.