The outcome of Phase 1 activities will be a powerful CFD-based design and analysis capability to predict turbopump cavitation dynamics in liquid rocket engines relevant to NASA. This tool will have direct impact on development and cost reduction of turbopumps relevant to the SLS in general and Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) engines in particular. It will enable fast and accurate 3D simulations of turbulent unsteady cavitation in existing or new/modified liquid space propulsion engines including J-2X, RS-68, F-1, etc. to allow detailed insight into the physics of cryogenic cavitation and will potentially facilitate design improvements of turbopumps involving liquid propellants such as LOX, LH2, LCH4, RP1 and RP-2.
The computational tool resulting from this project will have wide-ranging commercial applications. The Hybrid RANS-LES methodology in conjunction with unsteady cavitation models can be used for a wide variety of engineering applications involving unsteady turbulent cavitating flows. This tool will enable fast and accurate simulation for a wide range of cavitating flows in a variety of engineering applications and will lead to Improved analysis of unsteady turbulent cavitating flow fields in industrial turbomachinery, potentially leading to design improvements and cost reductions.
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