turbopump
Sign in to savethumb|Cutaway of the turbopump used in the Rocketdyne F-1|F1 rocket engine ([[Saturn V first stage). This is a centrifugal/radial design, which is nearly ubiquitous in turbopumps.|405x405px]]
~38 min read
Article
26 sectionsContents
- Design principles
- Hydrodynamic design
- Aerodynamic design
- Cycle design
- Mechanical design
- Seal design
- Rotordynamic design
- Impellers
- Centrifugal (radial) impellers
- Mixed-flow impellers
- Axial impellers
- Inducers
- Volutes and diffusers
- Turbines
- Impulse turbines for open cycles
- Reaction turbines for closed cycles
- Turbopumps as a full system
- History
- Invention and early development
- Postwar acceleration
- Later iteration
- Turbopump examples
- Notes
- See also
- References
- External links
thumb|Cutaway of the turbopump used in the Rocketdyne F-1|F1 rocket engine ([[Saturn V first stage). This is a centrifugal/radial design, which is nearly ubiquitous in turbopumps.|405x405px]]
A turbopump (portmanteau of turbine pump) is an assembly consisting of a liquid pump driven by a gas turbine, connected via a shaft (and occasionally gears as well). They were initially developed in the US and Germany in the 1930s and 1940s. While other use cases can exist, the primary purpose of turbopumps is to dramatically raise the pressure of liquid propellants and feed them to the combustion chamber of a rocket engine. While they have considerably higher design complexity, turbopump fed systems scale much more favorably in large rockets than pressure-fed systems, which require increasingly thick and heavy tanks to supply high chamber pressures in the engines.