USC LPL Turbopump

At USC’s Liquid Propulsion Lab, I worked on the design of an impulse turbine stage for a turbopump test article, focusing on the converging-diverging nozzle and rotor geometry. My work involved applying compressible flow and turbomachinery principles to calculate mass flow rate, throat area, exit Mach number, area ratio, and nozzle dimensions based on the required turbine power and operating conditions.

I also developed NEXT, a MATLAB-based nozzle generation tool that converts turbine design inputs into nozzle coordinates and STL geometry. The tool calculates key flow parameters, generates the nozzle wall profile, previews the geometry, and exports files that can be used for CAD development and manufacturing.

To validate the nozzle design, I performed CFD simulations and compared the simulated flow behavior against the values predicted by NEXT. The simulations helped confirm that the nozzle geometry produced results consistent with the analytical predictions, including the expected acceleration through the throat and diverging section. This project allowed me to connect propulsion theory, turbine design, CFD, coding, and practical hardware development into a repeatable design workflow.