High-fidelity simulations of unsteady flow through turbopumps and flowliners

High-fidelity computations were carried out to analyze the orbiter liquid hydrogen (LH₂) feedline flowliner and the low-pressure-fuel-turbopump (LPFTP). Computations were performed on the Columbia platform which is a 10,240-processor supercluster consisting of 20 Altix nodes with 512 processors each. Various computational models were used to characterize the unsteady flow features in the turbopump, including the orbiter LPFTP inducer, the orbiter manifold and an experimental test article used to represent the manifold. Unsteady flow originating from the orbiter LPFTP inducer is one of the major contributors to the high-frequency cyclic loading that results in high cycle fatigue damage to the gimbal flowliners just upstream of the LPFTP. The flowfields for the orbiter manifold and representative test article are computed and analyzed for similarities and differences. An incompressible Navier–Stokes flow solver INS3D, based on the artificial compressibility method, was used to compute the flow of liquid hydrogen in each test article.