Hydraulic Design and Performance Evaluation of a Fuel Pump for a High Pressure Turbopump System

고압 터보펌프용 연료펌프의 수력설계 및 성능 평가

A low NPSH and high pressure fuel pump has been designed for a turbopump system. The fuel pump has an axial inducer and a centrifugal impeller. A meanline method has been established for the preliminary design and performance prediction of pumps at design or off-design points. KeRC carried out a model testing of the fuel pump with water as a working fluid at the reduced speed. Predicted performances by the method are shown to be in good agreement with experimental results for cavitating and non-cavitating conditions. The established meanline method can be used for the performance prediction and preliminary design of high speed pumps which have a inducer, impeller and volute. In the current study, the three dimensional viscous flow in the fuel pump was investigated through numerical computation. A modified design of the fuel pun was generated to improve pump performance by utilizing CFD results. The modified fuel pump was experimentally tested by ROTEM and KARI. The measured non-cavitating and cavitating performance showed a good agreement with designed performance.