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POWERED ANKLE FOOT PROSTHESIS

A REPORT

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for

The award of degree of b.tech in mechanical engineering

By

USAID NAZIR

83-ZCU-2014

ROLL NO:14206145024

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DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF KASHMIR, HAZRATBAL

SRINAGAR-190006

OCTOBER 2017

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CERTIFICATE

Certified that seminar work entitled “PISTONLESS PUMP” is a bonafide work carried out
in the sixth semester by “USAID NAZIR” having Enrollment No. “14206145024” in partial
fulfilment for the award of Bachelor of Technology in “Mechanical Engineering” from
Institute of Technology,University of Kashmir,Zakura Campus during the academic year
2017-2018.

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SIGNATURE OF BRANCH COORDINATOR

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Acknowledgements

I feel highly privileged to express my sincere gratitude to my supervisor Qazi Junaid

Ashraf, Prof. and Coordinator Department of Mechanical Engineering, Institute of
Technology Zakura Campus Kashmir University Srinagar, for supervising this Seminar
work by offering me his invaluable guidance, and unequivocal support during the course of
the entire Seminar Work. I shall always remain indebted to him for constructive criticism as
well as appreciation rendered by him at many critical junctures during the course of study. I
wholeheartedly acknowledge Qazi Junaid Ashraf for mentoring this work and for providing
me with all the facilities for successful completion of this work.

Last, but not the least, I wholeheartedly thank my parents and siblings for their affection,
forbearance and support throughout my work. This work is by all means devoted to them. I
also thank everyone who has supported me in my B.Tech either directly or indirectly.

Usaid Nazir

October 2017

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements III

Table Of Contents IV

V
List Of Figures
VI
List Of Tables
VII
Abstract
1

1 INTRODUCTION 2

1.1 Historical Background 3

1.2 Objectives 3

2 DESCRIPTION OF THE PUMP TECHNOLOGY 3

2.1 Pump Design Process 5

3 NECESSITY 7

4 PISTONLESS DUAL CHAMBER ROCKET FUEL PUMP 8

4.1 Basic Pump Design 9

4.2 Pump Design Considerations 10

4.3 Pump Weight 12

4.4 Pressure Fed Weight Savings 15

5 APPLICATIONS 18

6 PUMP DESIGN SUMMARY 18

7 SAFETY AND RELIABILITY 19

8 CONCLUSION 19

REFERENCES 20

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LIST OF FIGURES

Figure No. Figure Caption Page No.

1 Pistonless Pumped Stage 2

2 Operational Cycle 4

3 Chamber Pump 6

4 Basic Pump Design 9

5 Optimized Pump Design 10

6 Pump assembly with flange for attachment to tank 11

7 Mass saving as a function of burn time and delivery 15

pressure.

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LIST OF TABLES

Table No. Table Caption Page No.

1 Pump Thrust-to-weight ratios 14

2 Pump Component Sizing for LOX Pump for flow rate 17

of 30,000 GPM (2 m3/sec)

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ABSTRACT

The application of a pistonless pump to a launch vehicle or spacecraft can provide cost and
reliability improvements over standard pressure fed or turbo pump fed designs
.Calculations show that in a first stage launch vehicle application,a system which uses the
pistonless pump has comparable performance to gas generator turbo-pump designs.

The performance can be improved by using low pressure liquid helium which is
pumped using a pistonless pump to high pressure and then heated at the engine.This allows
for lower pressurant tankage weight.This system uses less than 1% of the fuel mass in liquid
helium,which offers a performance advantage over comparable gas generator turbo-pump
powered rockets..A complete overall vehicle design is presented which shows how the
various systems are integrated and how much each component weighs.The vehicle uses
LOX/hydrocarbon propellants at moderate to high pressures to achieve high performance
at low weight and low cost.The pump is also shown to have significant performance and
flexibility increases for spacecreft when combined with high pressure storable propellant
engines.The proposed pump is also applicable to pumping gelled propellants.

KEYWORDS: Autogenous,Pressurization,CFD,Cryogenic Pumping,FMECA

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1. INTRODUCTION
A Pistonless Pump is a type of pump designed to move fluids without any moving parts
other than three chamber valves. The pump contains a chamber which has a valved inlet
from the fluid to be pumped, a valved outlet - both of these at the bottom of the pump, and a
pressurant inlet at the top of the pump. A pressurant is used, such as steam or pressurized
helium, to drive the fluid through the pump.

This paper proposes a pistonless pump as a alternative to turbo- pump and pressure fed
systems in both boost and upper stage applications and also for space vehicles.The
pistonless pump offers significant cost, reliability and performance advantages . These
advantages are related to the simplicity of the design. A discussion on how to optimized
vehicle which uses the proposed pump is presented in terms of chamber pressure .A
comparison using this optimization procedure is also presented for pressure fed and turbo-
pump systems .Any pressurized as which is compatible with the propellant may power the
pump,but this paper will focus on two possibilities: gaseous helium which is stored in
composite tanks or liquid helium(he) which is stored in a low pressure Dewar, pressurized
by a pistonless pump and vaporized at the rocket engine.The pump may also be used for
space propels on, where it ofers a number of advantages in performance , safety and
flexibility for space vehicle designers.

Figure 1 : Pistonless Pumped Stage

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1.1 HISTORICAL BACKGROUND

The pulsometer steam pump is a pistonless pump which was patented in 1872 by American
Charles Henry Hall. In 1875 a British engineer bought the patent rights of the pulsometer
and it was introduced to the market soon thereafter. The invention was inspired by the
Savery steam pump invented by Thomas Savery. Around the turn of the century,it was a
popular and effective pump for quarry pumping.

1.2 OBJECTIVES
NASA have developed a Low cost rocket fuel pump which has comparable performance to
turbopump at 80-90% lower cost. Perhaps the most difficult barrier to entry in the liquid
rocket business is the turbo pump. A turbo pump design requires a large engineering effort
and is expensive to manufacture and test. Starting a turbo pump fed rocket engine is a
complex process, requiring a careful synchronisation of many valves and subsystems. In
fact, Beal aerospace tried to avoid the issue entirely by building a huge pressure feed
booster. Their booster never flew, but the engineering behind it was sound and, if they had a
low cost pump at their disposal, they might be competing against Boeing. This pump saves
up to 90% of the mass of the tanks as compared to a pressure fed system. This pump has
really proved to be a boon for rockets. By using this pump the rocket does not have to carry
such a heavy load and can travel with very high speed.

2. DESCRIPTION OF THE PUMP TECHNOLOGY

The piston less pump system is basically a pressure fed pump chamber that is periodically
vented and refilled from the propellant tank through a check valve, and then pressurized to
deliver propellant to the engine through another check valve. Two chambers, a main
chamber and an auxiliary chamber with overlapping cycles provide steady output pressure.
A diagram of the pump operation is shown in Figure. Two pumping chambers are used in
each pump, each one being alternately refilled and pressurized. The pump starts with both
chambers filled delivering from the main chamber (Step1.Once the level get slow in the
main chamber, the auxiliary chamber is pressurized; and flow is there by established from
both sides during a short transient period (Step 2) until full flow is established from the

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auxiliary chamber. Then the nearly empty chamber is vented and refilled. (Step3) Then flow
is against a blushed from both chambers, (Step4) the auxiliary chamber is refilled and
finally the cycle repeats. This results in steady flow and pressure. In general only one
chamber needs to have flow margin, so that is why the chamber sizes are a symmetrical. A
diagram and photo liquid nitro gen pump that was developed for an LOX Methane RCS
thruster’s application for NASA Glenn.

The pressurant gas can be supplied from a source of liquefied gas that is heated at
the engine, such as liquid helium, or by heating the propellants themselves (autogenous
pressurization).This basic pump design has been around for many years 3, 4, 5, and systems
last a very long time, in fact one pump come with a 25yearguarantee.The pump is much
larger than an equivalent turbo-pump, but since it starts full of propel ant, there is node
crease in overall propellant volume. A Diagram of a Pump that was Build and Tested is
shown in Figure 2. This System includes all the necessary parts to test the Pump.

Figure 2 : Operational Cycle

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2.1 PUMP DESIGN PROCESS

Chamber pressure

The first step in the development process is to determine the best combustion chamber
pressure. For a piston less pump system, the pump weight is proportion alto the pressure,
but the pump weight does not drive the system design. Instead, the weight of the pressurant
which drives the pump is the key factor, just as it is for a gas generator turbo pump system.
For a turbo pump operating with a chamber pressure of 1000 psi and LOXHC propellants,
the gas generate or burns about 2.5%of the of the propellant in the gas generator. At higher
pressures, proportionally more propellant is burned, and although the ISP increases with
pressure, the optimum chamber pressure is on the order of 1000 psi. For a piston less pump,
the pump can run on helium stored at low temperature and heated at the engine, so the
pressurant weighs only5% of the propellant mass at1000 psi. Therefore, the optimum output
pressure for a piston less pump system is approximately 1700 psi, which results in an
increase in ISP as compared to a gas generator system. At this pressure, the helium weighs
about 1% of the propellant mass and the pump weighs about 1% of the thrust. For details on
this launch vehicle optimization process, [see Ref. 2]. Of course a staged combustion
system has higher ISP, but it is quite expensive and the higher operating pressures lead to
decreased reliability. The other extreme of their liability and performance curve is a
peroxide powered turbo-pump, as used on the Soyuz launch vehicle, which uses a larger
percentage of the propellant to run the turbo-pump, but has an excel entre liability. The
precise chamber pressure for the flight vehicle should be a compromise between
performance and reliability, with reliability being more important.

Pump Chamber Design

The pump chamber scan be spheres, cylinders or any other pressure vessel shape. In order to
minimize the mass of the pressurant gas, it is best to use heated gas pressurant. This leads to
a requirement to use metallic chambers, and stainless steel is best for heat resistance and
specific strength. The optimum shape for a metallic pressure vessel is asp here. The mass of
the pump chambers is easily determined based on the pressure and volume requirements.

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The pump chamber volume is based on the cycle time and the required flow rate. The next
step is to determine the required cycle time.

Figure 3 : Chamber Pump

The pump cycle time should be as fast as possible to minimize the volume and there
by the mass of the pump chamber. However, the cycle time is limited by the response time
of the valves and the time required to vent, fill and the pressurize pump chambers. The time
required to dispense from the chamber should be longer than the other times, so that the
main chamber can vent, refill and pressurize during the time that the auxiliary chamber is
dispensing. The vent time is the time required for the pump chamber pressure to fall below
the tank pressure so that the chamber can begin filling. Assuming that we are starting with
an early empty pump chamber which is still full of pressurant gas, the first step is to open
the vent valve, which takes a bout30ms. Then the pressurant gas flows through the valve
under choked and then subsonic conditions. The vent valve is designed to open under a high
delta pressure and then close under low delta P, so the valve actuator power is low for a
given valve flow area. For the given design, the vent valve diameter is 20inches.The time to

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vent is ~100ms.The next step is the fill process, where in propellant flows from the tank in
to the pump chamber, In this step, the key is to diffuse the flow entering the pump chamber
so as to minimize foaming or bubble entrainment of the incoming flow. We have developed
a proprietary method of doing this which works very well. The time required to fill an 8 Ft
diameter pump chamber is approximately 300ms, with 224 inch diameter check valves. Just
before the propellant reach the top of the pump chamber, the flow is halted by the
pressurization step. The propellant level can be sensed by a float based or capacitive level
sensor. The pressurize time is a function of the flow rate of the pressurize valve and
regulator, and if the pump chamber is nearly full of propellant at the end of the fill cycle,
the mass of pressurant required is small, so this is can be a fast process, taking less than
100ms. Then the dispense step can proceed while the auxiliary pump chamber is vented
refilled and repressurized. Ideally the dispense process is much longer than the vent, fill and
pressurize process. A 3 second dispense time works well. This allows us to determine the
main pump chamber volume, in this case it is 1800 gallons (7m3). The auxiliary pump
chamber size is approximately 2/3 of the main chamber volume. The exact volumes can be
determined based on optimization of the various portions of the cycle.

3. NECESSITY
 The turbo pump used in rocket are very heavy, containing many rotating parts by
which there are more frictional losses which more consumption of fuel there by
decreasing the efficiency of the engine.
 Since the rocket has to remain stable in the space, is difficult and require complex
method for it. If this pump gets any fault then its reappearance requires long time.
So, there must be such adevice which overcomes all the drawbacks of the turbo-
pump.
 The pistonless punp is the solution for the problems faced by using turbo-pumps.

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4. PISTONLESS DUAL CHAMBER ROCKET FUEL PUMP

With the advent of low cost ablative liquid fueled rocket engines and composite tanks, the
problem of propellant pressurization becomes the last stumbling block to affordable
launchers. Turbopumps are currently used in the majority of launch vehicles, although
piston pumps have been designed and flown1 and pneumatic diaphragm pumps have been
proposed by Godwin2and Sobey.3 The pump considered herein is much simpler and less
expensive than a turbopump. The pump concept is simple: instead of having the whole fuel
tank pressurized to 2-7 MPa, the main tank is at pressurized to 100-400 kPa and it is drained
into a pump chamber, and then the pump chamber is pressurized to deliver fuel to the
engine. An auxiliary chamber supplies fuel while the main pump chamber is being refilled.
This type of pump has benign failure modes, can be installed in the fuel tank to minimize
vehicle size and uses inexpensive materials and processes in its construction. With the right
choice of materials, the pump will be compatible with all common rocket fuels. The pump
can be started instantly, with no spool up time required. It can be run until the tank is dry
with no concerns about cavitation or overspeeding. The simplicity and low cost of the pump
allows for systems with engine out capability or allows for the use of tri-propellant systems.
This pump lends itself to mass production techniques for low cost systems with multiple
engines and tanks. The pump can be easily scaled up or down with no loss of performance.
The pump can be stored for a long time with no degradation.

4.1 Basic Pump Design

The basic pump design is shown in Figure 1. In this design, two pumping chambers are
used, each one being alternately refilled and pressurized. The pump is powered by
pressurized gas which acts directly on the fluid. The pump is designed so that the time
required to vent, refill and pressurize one pumping chamber is less than the time to dispense
a given quantity of fuel from the other.

The pump controls are set up so that when the level in one side gets low, the other side
is pressurized; and then after flow is established from both sides, the low side is vented and
refilled. This results in steady flow and pressure. A model of this pump was designed and
built out of clear plastic, and it performed as expected delivering steady flow and

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pressure.The pressures and flow rates were measured and the data was analyzed to
determine how to improve the pump performance.

Figure 4 : Basic Pump Design

4.2 Pump Design Considerations

Although the pump design is simple, the optimization process is not. Making the pump
cycle as fast as possible would make it lightweight, but higher flow velocities cause
problems. A pump with a small chamber must be filled and vented quickly, with minimal
head loss through the gas and liquid valves and plumbing. The maximum inflow rate is
limited by the main tank pressure (usually about 300 kPa) and the area of the inlet valves.
Also, if the inflow velocity is too high, the propellant will be aerated, which may cause
problems with the engine. The ullage volume in the pump chamber should be small to
minimize gas usage, but if it is too small, there will be a loss of propellant through the vent.
Furthermore, the pump cycle frequency must not excite any combustion instabilities in the
rocket motor. The second generation pump design process started with the realization that

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by placing the pump chamber inside the main tank and increasing the size of the check
valves, the pump can be filled very quickly. Once the pump is being filled much faster than
it is emptied, it becomes clear that the two chambers do not have to be symmetrical

Figure 5 : Optimized Pump Design

The optimized pump design is shown in Figure 2. Instead of two similar pump
chambers, it uses one main chamber which supplies fuel for most of the time and an
auxiliary chamber which supplies fuel for the rest of the time. The main chamber is placed
inside the tank, and it is filled through a number of check valves so that it can be filled
quickly, thereby reducing the size of the auxiliary chamber, which is typically one fourth
the size of the main chamber. The optimized design offers a substantial weight savings over
the basic design, in that it uses one primary pumping chamber and one auxiliary chamber
instead of two pumping chambers. A prototype of this type of pump is shown in Figure 3.
The tank is made of stainless steel, the valves are brass, and the seals are Teflon so that it
can be usd to pump LOX.

The prototype includes a flange to easily attach it to the bottom of a tank. The
prototype uses cylindrical tanks instead of spherical for ease of manufacture. It weighs
approximately 6.8 kg exclusive of the air valves and the bottom flange

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Figure 6 : Photo of pump assembly with flange for attachment to tank.

4.3 Pump Weight

One of the most important benefits of this pump is the low weight for a given propulsion
system. The weight may be calculated by determining the weight of the pump chambers and
the valves. For valves or chambers, the weight is found to be proportional to the flow rate
and the pressure. The weight of the chambers can be easily figured as spherical or
cylindrical pressure vessels. The weight of the fluid and pneumatic valves may be estimated
based on the weight of commercially available check valves and actuated butterfly valves.
For example an aluminum 200 series Circle Seal check valve flows up to 200 liter/minute at
20 MPa for a 25 mm size which weighs 250 grams. Assuming that the weight is
proportional to the design pressure times the flow rate, a valve for use at 4 MPa and 200
liter/minute would weigh 50 grams. If each pump requires 5 valves as in Figure 3, then for a
pump which supplies 200 lpm at 4 MPa, the valves would weigh 250 grams. Note that not
all the valves will be the same design, but we are assuming an average weight. If the pump

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supplies rocket fuel to an engine at a given mass flow rate, the weight of the valves may be
calculated as a function of the engine thrust. Since the thrust is proportional to mass flow
rate, a thrust to weight ratio for a set of valves may be determined. For example, if a set of
rocket pumps supply LOX and kerosene at 200 liters/minute to an engine with a specific
impulse of 285 s, the thrust would be about 8800 N. This gives a thrust to weight ratio for
the fluid valves as 2600. The gas valves will be substantially lighter. Therefore the valves
can be considered to be a small percentage of total pump weight.

The weight of a pressure vessel can be found as a function of volume, pressure and the
specific strength of the material.

The required volume for the main pump chamber Vc is:

𝑉𝑐 = 𝑄 ⋅ 𝑇𝑐𝑦𝑐𝑙𝑒 (1)

Where Q is the propellant flow rate and Tcycle is the cycle time of the pump. We will use

spherical pump chambers in the calculations that follow. Cylindrical vessels would be
heavier.

The diameter of a spherical pump chamber Dc is given by:

3 6.𝑉𝑐
𝐷𝑐 = √ (2)
𝜋

The required thickness for a spherical vessel made from a material with a given maximum
stress is given by Roark.

𝑃𝑓 .𝐷 𝑐
𝑡= (3)
4.⋅𝜎𝑐

Where Pf is the fuel pressure and σc is the allowable stress. The mass of the chamber Mc, can
be computed by using the thickness t, the area of the spherical chamber, and the density of
the chamber material, ρc:

𝑀𝑐 = 𝑡. 𝜋. 𝐷𝑐 2 ⋅ 𝜌𝑐

Or

𝑃
𝑀𝑐 = 4.⋅𝜎𝑓 . 𝜋. 𝐷𝑐 3 ⋅ 𝜌𝑐 (4)
𝑐

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Because the chamber size is a function of the flow rate, we can put the chamber mass in
terms of the flow rate:

6.𝑃
𝑀𝑐 = 4.⋅𝜎𝑓 . 𝑄 ⋅ 𝑇𝑐𝑦𝑐𝑙𝑒 . 𝜌𝑐
c

1.5𝑃𝑓
Or 𝑀𝑐 = . 𝑄 ⋅ 𝑇𝑐𝑦𝑐𝑙𝑒 . 𝜌𝑐 (5)
𝜎𝑐

In order to calculate the thrust to weight ratio, we need to determine the pump required for a
given propellant and thrust.

The thrust T is given by the momentum equation for the case of ideal expansion

𝑇 = 𝑄 ⋅ 𝜌 𝑓 ⋅ 𝑔 ⋅ 𝐼𝑠𝑝 (6)

where ρf is the average density of the propellants, g is the acceleration of gravity and Isp is
the specific impulse of the propellants at the fuel pressure.

The optimized pump mass is the mass of one full size chamber, one ¼ size chamber, 5
check valves and three or four air valves. Therefore, the total mass of both pump chambers
is 125% of the mass of one chamber. If we assume that the valves and the ullage add
another 25% to the pump mass, the total pump mass is 1.252 or 1.56 times the chamber
mass. Now we can calculate the thrust to weight W ratio for the pump:

𝑇 .43×𝜌𝑓 ⋅ 𝑔 ⋅𝐼𝑠𝑝
= 𝑇𝑐𝑦𝑐𝑙𝑒 (7)
𝑊 𝑃𝑓 × ×𝜌𝑐
𝜎𝑐

This equation applies to a single pump in the case of a monopropellant, or to a number

of pumps for bipropellant systems. Because the pump mass scales linearly with flow rate,
the flow can be divided among a number of pumps. If the pumping chamber is made
cylindrical instead of spherical the weight will be twice as much, but it may be easier to
integrate into a fuel tank. The thrust-to-weight ratio can be calculated for a number of
propellant combinations:

Using the equation (7) above with a cycle time of 5 seconds, and density and specific
impulse data from Huzel and Huang6 for engines running at 4 MPa at sea level, pump
thrust-to-weight ratios were computed for typical rocket fuels. 2219 Aluminum with a
design stress of 350 MPa and a density of 2.8 gm/cc was assumed to be the pump material.

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The pressure drop through the injectors was not included. Higher T/W can be achieved by
using titanium or FRP pump chambers.

Average Pump
Propellant Density Mixture Isp Thrust/
(kg/m^3) Ratio (sec) Weight
LOX / RP-1 935 2.58 285 732
LOX / LH 2 279 4.13 370 283
H2O2 / RP-1 1200 6.5 276 657
N2O4 / N2H2 1220 1.36 277 929

Table 1. Pump Thrust-to-weight ratios

Recent testing indicates that the cycle time may be reduced to 1 second or less.
Commercial diaphragm pumps operate with a 1 second (60 RPM) cycle time. Therefore
the numbers above are conservative, even as safety factors are added in. As far as the
scalability of the pump is concerned, for spherical pumps with a similar time to fill, the
flow velocities need to scale linearly with the pump size. The velocity through the
filling check valves is a function of main tank pressure, so larger pumps will require
more or larger inlet check valves. However, if the pump chamber is made larger in
diameter, but not taller, the pump will scale with minimal changes.

4.4 Pressure Fed Weight Savings

Pressure fed systems include the weight of a high pressure tank, whereas the pump fed
system includes the weight of a low pressure tank and the pump. Assume both systems use
a similar high pressure gas supply. The weight savings of the pump fed system can be
calculated based on the fuel pressure and the burn time. Note that the pump consists of
chambers which hold the same pressure as the tank in a pressure fed system, but the pump is
much smaller, and the tanks in a pump fed system are much lighter than in a pressure fed
system because they need to hold a much lower pressure but are of the same volume. The
weight of any pressure vessel is proportional to the volume of the vessel and to the pressure
inside the tank. Higher pressures require thicker, heavier walls.

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Given::

 The volume of the pump chamber is equal to the flow rate times the cycle time
 The volume of the tank is equal to the flow rate times the burn time.
Therefore the ratio of the pump chamber volume (or mass) to the tank volume (or mass) is
equal to the ratio of the cycle time to the burn time. This allows us to calculate the pump
mass for a given fuel volume and pressure as a function of the tank mass for an equivalent
pressure fed system. The ratio of the pump chamber mass to the pressure fed tank mass is
the ratio of the cycle time to the burn time. The mass of the pump is 1.56 times the mass of
one pump chamber. (See eq. 7).

Figure 7 : Mass savings as a function of burn time and delivery pressure.

Furthermore the tank weight is proportional to the fuel pressure, so when we replace a
pressure fed system with a pump fed system, the mass of the pump fed tank is equal to to
the fuel pressure divided by the tank pressure times the mass of the pressure fed tank.

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Therefore we can calculate the ratio of the weight of a pump fed system to the weight of
a pressure fed system as follows: (the first term is the mass of the pump and the second is
the mass of the tank.

𝑀𝑝𝑢𝑚𝑝_𝑠𝑦𝑠 𝑇𝑐𝑦𝑐𝑙𝑒 𝑃
= 1.56𝑇 + 𝑃𝑡𝑎𝑛𝑘 (8)
𝑀𝑝𝑟𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑢𝑟𝑒_𝑓𝑒𝑑 𝑏𝑢𝑟𝑛 𝑓𝑢𝑒𝑙

Where Mpumpsys is the mass of a pump fed system including the pump and the tank and
Mpressure_fed is the mass of the tanks in a pressure fed system.

Tcycle is the cycle time of the pump, usually 1 to 5 seconds and Tburn is the burn time of
the rocket, usually 120 to 300 seconds. Ptank is the pressure in the tank, usually 300 kPa and
Pfuel is the fuel pressure delivered to the rocket engine, usually 2.4 to 8 MPa.

The pump fed system is 5 to 10 times lighter than the pressure fed system for burn
times longer than a minute. The graph in Figure 7 shows the mass savings for a system with
a 5 second cycle time and 300 kPa tank pressure.

5. APPLICATIONS

 DEEP SPACE PROPULSION : NASA has a need for high power propulsion
to land and spacecraft on the moons of Jupiter and beyond. This pump would
allow these missions to go forward due to lower weight of fuel tanks.

 X-PRIZE VEHICLE FUEL PUMP APPLICATION : For X-prize

competitors, the fuel pump will reduce the cost.

 It is most commonly used to supply propellants to rocket engines. In this

configuration there are often two pumps working in opposite cycles to ensure

a constant flow of propellants to the engine.

6. PUMP DESIGN SUMMARY

The pump for a 2 million lb LOXRP engine would have the following characteristics. (LOX
pump)

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http://www.seminarstopics.com PISTONLESS PUMP

Main Chamber Dia 90 in 2.2 m

Aux Chamber Dia 62 in 1.6 m
Inlet Check valve Dia 24 in .61 m
Outlet Check valve Dia 20 in .51 m
Pressurize Valve Dia 8 in .2 m
Vent Valve Dia 20 in .51 m

Table 2 : Pump Component Sizing for LOX Pump for flow rate of 30,000 GPM
(2 m3/sec)

7. SAFETY AND RELIABILITY

This type of pump is not new; in fact it has been used to pump groundwater out of
basements for over 100 years, where reliability is critical. The present design operates much
more quickly and works in space and in a zero gee environment, but the key to reliability is
the slow moving parts and wide operational tolerances, which allow the pump to work
regardless of contamination, leakage or sensor failures. A complete FMECA analysis has
shown that many of the failure modes of the pump involve reduction in performance and no
single point failure can cause explosion or fire. If the valves on one of the chambers fail,
there will be a few seconds in which to execute a safe shutdown of the affected engine.

8. CONCLUSIONS

The most significant property of pistonless pump that makes them different from that of
turbo pump,is the absence of piston.This is the most unique technique.In this,the no. of
rotating parts is very less as compared to that of turbo pump.Also,its installation is very
easy and moreover,it is light weight than turbo pump.So,it has less losses and
improves,rather increases of efficiency of engine.Also,it is much economical than turbo
pump.

INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF KASHMIR

http://www.seminarstopics.com PISTONLESS PUMP

REFERENCES

1. Harrington, S. Pistonless Dual Chamber Rocket Fuel Pump: Testing and

Performance” AIAA 2003-

2. Joint Propulsion Conference, Huntsville, AL, 20-23 July 2003

3. Harrington, S. Launch Vehicle and Spacecraft System Design Using the Pistonless
Pump Steve Harrington AIAA 2004-6130 AIAA Space 2004

4. Lucas, Je. “Pump” US patent 2673525 granted March 30, 1954

5. Sobey, Albert J. “Fluid Pressurizing System” US patent 3,213,804 granted Oct 2

1961.

6. http://www.seminarstopics.com

INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY, UNIVERSITY OF KASHMIR