Aorta

Aorta is LPL's first attempt to design and manufacture its own turbopump to use in a pump fed engine. It is designed to be a single shaft turbopump using compressed N2 gas to run the turbine.

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Pump:

The turbopump is designed to have two pumps, one for the fuel side to supply Jet-A and the other to supply LOX to the engine. Aorta will be using two centrifugal pumps connected to a single shaft powered by a turbine. The pumps are supposed to be operated at 25000 RPM providing 15 GPM flow rate with a design head rise of 800 ft for the fuel side. We are designing a fully shrouded impeller for better structural strength and trying to maintain mostly 2D flow through the impeller. The volute is designed with a constant velocity approach.

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Test Pump:

Before moving forward with a full scale testing for the pump with a turbine, a subscale testing for the pump is to be performed to characterize the pump performance while reducing costly testing equipment. The pump is scaled down using similarity laws and while maintaining a design specific speed. The scaled down pump is expected to run at 3000 rpm using electric motors and provide 50 ft head rise at 15 GPM flow rate. The test pump is to be 3D printed using regular FDM printers.

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Turbine:

Aorta is supposed to be powered by an Axial Impulse turbine running at 25000 RPM providing a power output of 6.4 KW. The blading is designed to be symmetric using MOC with a code developed in-house to design the blades for a given inlet blade angle. the turbine uses supersonic blading and considers shock and expansion fans on blade profiles. The turbine is to be powered by compressed N2 gas. The turbine will be tested at full scale.