FTT offers turbopump expertise specializing in system trade studies, detail design and analysis, and hardware fabrication and test. We provide component and subcomponent development and testing for booster, upper-stage, and hypersonic engines for all engine cycles and a wide variety of cryogenic and storable propellants.

Over the past three years, FTT has performed more than $17 million in turbopump component and sub-component research and development, including supporting the latest technology programs such as Upper Stage Engine Technologies (USET), Next Generation Launch Technology Program (NGLTP), Hydrocarbon Boost (HCB), and Third Generation Reusable Boost (3GRB). Additionally, FTT has significant combustion expertise including chemical kinetic modeling.

Recently, as part of a team with Aerojet, we delivered a liquid hydrogen turbopump to Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) for the USET program. This turbopump began testing in November 2010, and with 246 pieces of instrumentation, will validate computational tools developed for this program to advance state-of-the-art turbopump rotating machinery for future upper-stage advanced cryogenic, liquid oxygen, and hydrogen engines.

For more information about this turbopump and the USET program, please see this video.

Additionally, FTT’s physics based cavitation models for advanced hydrogen turbopump design were recently featured as an Air Force SBIR/STTR Innovation Story for having outstanding potential for Air Force and DoD applications. FTT’s new, state-of-the art water flow test facility, cryogenic cavitation test chamber, and cavitation modeling improvements will allow for the design of higher performance, lighter turbopumps for rocket propulsion. Our new technology improves the prediction of potentially damaging cavitation in turbopump inducers and impellers and provides extensive flow testing capabilities. For more information about this exciting technology, please see this article.

FTT offers the space industry:

• Continuously upgraded physics-based design and analysis computational suite that provides the highest fidelity steady-state, unsteady, and transient modeling and simulation capability in the industry.
• A class 1,000 clean room, gas and water flow test facilities, cryogenic laboratories, space-specific instrumentation including custom sensors, and a secure assembly area in our test center.
• ISO 9001 Certification in design, analysis, assembly, and test.
• AS 9100 Certification.