Design and performance analysis of compressor in Solid Propellant Air Turbo Rocket (SPATR)

The design and characteristic analysis of the single-stage centrifugal compressor were performed to meet the requirements of the integral performance of a certain solid propellant air turbo rocket (SPATR). Based on the limitation of the geometry and aerodynamic demands, the impeller and diffuser were designed and optimized by considering the disc friction loss and the flow quality. A theoretical approach was applied to evaluate feasibility and primary aerodynamic performance of the compressor. Focused on the operation performance of the compressor, the detailed flow structure in the compressor was investigated by using numerical simulation. The results show that the total pressure ratio and isentropic efficiency of the compressor in design point are 3.5 and 0.78 respectively, which meets the design demands. The compressor has excellent aerodynamic characteristics during the starting procedure or under the partial loading condition. The position of flow separation and the reason of flow loss are analyzed to conduct further optimization.