SpinOffs

Historically, testing has played a critical role in the turbomachinery design process and multiple rounds of “design, test, analyze, repeat” were not uncommon.  Today however, the industry seems to be drifting away from development testing. Often, the only scheduled test in a development program is the performance validation test of the first assembled system. I believe this trend exists for three main reasons:

The path to better operation stability and robustness

High suction performance pump inducers are critical to important industrial and advanced aerospace applications where the required inlet pressure is near the vapor pressure of the liquid to be pumped. These include boiler feed pumps, liquefied natural gas (LNG) transfer pumps, aircraft fuel pumps and space vehicle propellant pumps. Improving the efficiency of moving natural gas from production sites to where it is used is an increasingly important application for high suction performance inducers. Over the past 17+ years, Concepts NREC has been researching ways of improving inducer design to advance inducer suction performance, operational range, stability, and structural robustness.