Morphological design considering layout and permutation of the components for rocket turbopump

Abstract

The rocket engine turbopump is the high-rotational speed and high-power turbomachinery to feed the propellant from the tank to the combustion chamber. Lateral vibration of turbopump rotor is a very serious problem and it has brought about the unplanned reworks in the development phase. In order to avoid these rework process, we have proposed the morphological design method in the upstream design phase. This design method is characterized by considering the layout and permutation of the turbopump rotor components (inducer, impeller, turbine, bearing, seal, etc.) as design parameter. In this paper, the adopting results to the liquid hydrogen turbopump by using the morphological design method are presented. It is possible for this design method to evaluate and compare the rotor vibration characteristics according to the layout and permutation quantitatively. Furthermore, pattern of superior morphologies was organized on the basis of overhang of turbopump rotor and the vibration characteristics of superior layouts and permutations were indicated. By the trial results, it is shown that the morphological design method is usable for rotating machinery to reduce the reworks.