Indian Journal of Cryogenics

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is the present day state-of-art technique for simulating fluid flow and heat transfer analysis of turbo-machinery. In this paper, results of CFD analysis on liquid oxygen (LOX) pump (LPOT) used as a booster pump for a staged combustion cycle based rocket engine have been reported. Ansys CFX® has been used for the flow field analysis of the LOX pump. The computation technique involves discretized threedimensional, Reynolds Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) based two-equation SST (Shear Stress Transport) k-m turbulence model over an unstructured grid. Present effort is an attempt to find out flow field, temperature and pressure profile of fluid at different components of axial pump of LPOT system viz. inlet branch, inducer, straightening device for identifying the areas of recirculation, flow separation and cavitation. The data generated have been analyzed to study the performance of the pump at steady state. These results will be used as initialization conditions for unsteady, 3d cavitation modelling of pump with a view to critical analysis of complex flow pattern of LOX in the pump with cavitation-induced instabilities.