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Vacuum 82 (2008) 61–65

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Engineering aspects of turbomolecular pump design$

M.H. Hablanian
Varian Vacuum Technologies, 121 Hartwell Avenue. Lexington, MA 02421, USA

Abstract

The development of modern (thin-bladed) turbomolecular high-vacuum pumps began in 1957 with the demonstration of the possibility
of obtaining high compression ratios with axial flow compressors in the molecular flow regime. Thirty years later, such pumps had
become the major method for high vacuum pumping. It had been apparent from the beginning that pneumatic compressors can be useful
at any pressure provided a proper number of suitable impellers were used. However, theoretical studies, initially by Prof. A. Shapiro’s
group at MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) dealt primarily with the pumping mechanism in molecular flow rather than
with an optimum practical pump design. Some observations in such studies were misunderstood and the first pump designs
were not optimized. Later, compound or hybrid pumps were introduced, which incorporated molecular drag pumping stages. In more
recent years, pumps have been made which can exhaust directly to the atmosphere by means of added centrifugal-regenerative
impellers. The use of different impeller types provides freedom to the designer to create pumps that match any reasonable desired
performance.
This paper will attempt to explore some of the engineering aspects of design, especially relationships of volume and mass flows,
permissible pressure ratios in various density domains, and their relevance to power consumption.
r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Vacuum pumps; High-vacuum pumps; Turbo molecular pumps

1. Introduction devices with high pumping speed after the usefulness

One of the major developments in high-vacuum technol-
ogy during the last 50 years has been the introduction of
turbomolecular pumps and oil-free primary vacuum
pumps. The latter include multi-stage cam-type pumps,
scroll pumps and diaphragm pumps.
The history of the employment of axial flow compressor-
type pumps in high-vacuum technology began with an
experiment conducted early in 1957 at the National
Research Corporation, where a project was initiated for
an evaluation of an existing automotive supercharger
attached in series to a mechanical vacuum pump.
This was a result of a study conducted in 1956 seeking
DOI of original article: 10.1016/j.vacuum.2005.11.070
$
This paper should have been included in the Vacuum special issue
entitled ‘‘Proceedings of the 9th European Vacuum Conference (EVC-9),
5–7 April 2005, Paris, France’’. The special issue was published as volume
81 issue 6 (2007).
Tel.: +1 781 235 8069; fax: +1 781 860 5437.
E-mail address: mars.hablanian@varianinc.com.
of Roots type blowers had already been established during
the preceding 5 years. The first paper on the subject was a
part of the first International Vacuum Congress (Namur,
1958) [1].
While a higher compression ratio per stage was expected
in analogy with other pumping situations in molecular flow
conditions, the actual result of almost 10 times higher
values was somewhat surprising and it attracted the
attention of Prof. Shapiro of MIT [2].
The rest, as it is said, is history. It should be noted that
the interest of the MIT group was not to develop the best
possible high-vacuum pump but to develop an analytical
expression of the pumping mechanism in molecular flow
regime.
Perhaps the simplest way is to view the process (for a
mechanical engineer) as a displacement model; after all, it
is displacement even though not a positive one. If we
imagine the pumped gas to be stationary and for a moment
think of the pump flying into the gas as an airplane,
we may observe that the pumping speed (volumetric

0042-207X/$ - see front matter r 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.vacuum.2007.04.030
 ARTICLE IN PRESS
62 M.H. Hablanian / Vacuum 82 (2008) 61–65
displacement) can be expressed as follows:
S ¼ ðvelocity in pumping directionÞ  ðprojected pumping areaÞ.
Then, S, the pumping speed, is the blade velocity multiplied
by the cosine of the blade angle and the inlet area is the
projected annular area of the bladed section of the rotor:
S ¼ kðpDf sin aÞðpDl cos aÞ,
where k is the coefficient of volumetric efficiency that may
be called capture coefficient, D is the average blade
diameter, f is the rotational frequency, l is the length of
the blade, and a is the blade angle (this immediately implies
a maximum value at 451). The analysis provided by Kruger
and Shapiro essentially defined conditions of k, which
depends on the number and dimensions of blades and
other factors.
To simplify the analysis, the following assumptions were
made. Maxwellian gas; molecular flow throughout the
pump; constant temperature; steady state conditions;
infinite blade length (end effects neglected); wall reflections
neglected; blade peripheral velocity is constant (in other
words, linear progression rather than rotation); rotor/
stator symmetry (same number and angle of blades). None
of these assumptions are strictly true but this frame-
work provides sufficient understanding for practical
engineering design.
Unfortunately, a few statements made in the original
paper, although not incorrect, were misunderstood. The
most prominent was the note that it is not very interesting
to analyze the molecular trajectories in the stators, because
they are similar to those in rotors. This was taken to mean
that both rotors and stators produce the same value of
compression and as a result the required number of stages
in pumps was often quoted twice as high as it should have
been. Although, the trajectories in stators may be similar,
they are in opposite directions to those on the rotor!
Stators decelerate the gas flow, exactly analogous to the
situation at near-atmospheric pressure [1].
Some assumptions, based on similarity with axial flow
compressors, appeared so obvious to the initial explorers
that they were not even mentioned. For, example, the
identity of basic shapes of blades and their number in
rotors and stators [2]. Such identity makes sense in a
machine that produces at best a compression ratio per
rotor–stator pair of 1.05, but should not be a require-
ment in a high-vacuum pump that has 10 times higher
compression ratio.
Also, curvature and end effects were neglected (blade
rows were assumed to be parallel and long). Since the
pumping speed is proportional to the blade velocity, the
capture coefficient varies from the root to periphery
(in small pumps, as much as by a factor of two, which is
certainly not negligible). This implies that an adjustment in
blade angle along the radius could be of value, with a
criterion of maintaining equal compression value, in order
to prevent possible backward leakage. In other words, the
need for the usually employed symmetry between rotors
and following stators should perhaps be revisited.
2. Entrance conditions
Pumping speed is not the most interesting parameter,
once it is observed that, for the first (inlet) stage the blade
angles should be near 451. If pumping speed varies by
perhaps 10%, it means that the final pressure may be
1.1  108 instead of 1  108 Torr, hardly a very signifi-
cant issue in vacuum system performance. Also, a 10%
difference in pumping speed will barely have an effect on
the time of evacuation, because during the initial evacua-
tion, degassing rates have a more dominant effect than the
pumping speed. Besides, changes of entrance geometry are
even more important. For example, nearly 20% can be
gained by simply enlarging the conduit between the pump
and vacuum chamber. It makes sense to keep the stator
and rotor similar in the first stage because we would like to
keep the initial pumping speed as high as possible, but, it is
not a necessary condition in the second stage, after a
compression of say a factor of five, and certainly not in the
third stage.
In the past, the reduction of volumetric flow, due to high
compression values was handled by changing the blade
angles (as noted already by Kruger and Shapiro [2]).
However, purely from practical design considerations, it is
rather difficult to make angles say 100 times smaller than
451. Thus, the first commercial turbopumps worked well
under molecular flow conditions, but their maximum
permissible pressure difference was much too low for them
to function in transition and in viscous flow regime. So,
response to such high compression values had to be
reconsidered and it led to the design of compound pumps.
3. Compound and hybrid pumps
It was known that molecular drag pumps performed
better at higher pressure, so many manufactures began to
make dual pumps mounted on the same rotating shaft.
This variation can be called a ‘compound pump’. Usually,
the second pump was of the Holweck (cylindrical) type
with helical pumping grooves (Fig. 1). This immediately
increased the maximum discharge pressure 100 times or
more (up to a few Torr). However, such designs had two
disadvantages. First, the rotor (and therefore the pump)
had to be twice as long and second, drag pumps, to
be efficient, demand tight tolerances between rotor and
stator structures.
It was desirable to change the designs of near-exit stages
more drastically without the addition of a number of stages
and without elongation of the rotor. This led to the
‘‘Macro-Torr’’ design in which the last three or four stages
were converted to molecular drag impellers (of the Gaede
type). Such pumps can be called ‘hybrid pumps’, (Fig. 2).
Even in this case the choice was made to accommodate an
existing rotor design, which still required tight tolerances
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M.H. Hablanian / Vacuum 82 (2008) 61–65 63

Fig. 1. An example of a compound turbomolecular pump.

Fig. 2. A comparison of cross-sections of an all-axial impeller pump
(axial instead of radial) and more complex stator struc- (on the left side of the vertical axis) and a hybrid pump (right side). The
dark outlines indicate the construction of axial flow stators. The dark bars
tures. To simplify the design and reduce the need for close near top arrows are bladed sections of the first axial rotor. The dark
tolerances, different turbine-type impellers were needed, square on the right outlines the peripheral pumping channel of the first of
which would perform at elevated pressures and have a four molecular drag stages connected in series.
higher maximum discharge capability. This was already
clear in 1957 [1] and it led us at NRC to the consideration
of centrifugal impellers, especially of the regenerative type.
Professor Santalo [3] was asked to analyze their perfor-
mance at reduced pressures and pressure ratios of about 3
per stage were predicted at molecular and transition
regimes. This was significant and practical enough to
pursue the possibility, but the urgency of other work
delayed the introduction of such pumps until more recent
time. Examples of this concept are pumps having
additional regenerative-centrifugal stages [4] and multi-
stage pumps that can discharge directly to atmosphere
(without any backing pumps) [5]. Fig. 3 shows an example
demonstrating the advantage of a hybrid design. Fig. 4
demonstrates the possibility of improvement in power
consumption by addition of a single regenerative-centrifu-
gal stage. Fig. 3. Performance improvement of the hybrid pump due to conversion
of the last four rotors into drug-type discs. Lower curve: all-axial pump,
4. Stage design selection upper curve: hybrid pump.

In general, pressure-flow characteristics of any pump or
compressor (provided that Reynolds numbers are not
widely different) can be expressed as a curve (or a straight
line) as shown in Fig. 5, using non-dimensional parameters
selected by similitude analysis [6]. All compressors
(and vacuum pumps) can be characterized by two sets of
variables representing flow rate and pressure rise. Such a
correlation as shown in Fig. 5, where S is the pumping
speed, N the rotational speed in RPM, D the diameter
of the impeller, P the pressure, and r the density [1].
Each pumping stage must be understood in terms of the
position on this curve while in operation at various
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64 M.H. Hablanian / Vacuum 82 (2008) 61–65

Fig. 4. The change in power consumption by the addition of a single

regenerative-centrifugal impeller (dots) compared to an existing hybrid
pump (squares). The dashed curve indicates a potentially fully hybridized
pump.

Fig. 6. Pressure–volume performance comparison of different impellers.

Lower right—axial flow propeller; upper left—regenerative-centrifugal
disc having several concentric peripheral pumpin channels in series.

Fig. 5. Typical generalized pump or compressor performance in terms of

non-dimensional groups of variables (obtained from similitude analysis.
S—pumping speed; N—rotational frequency (rpm); D—impeller diameter;
DP—pressure difference; r—density.

conditions. The graph should also serve as a guide for

power considerations.
The selected ratios indicate that in theory the pressure
performance of an impeller grows as the square of the
diameter, the volumetric flow grows as the cube of the
diameter, and the power consumption, which is propor-
tional to the product of the two, grows as the fifth power of
the diameter. For example, if the diameter of an impeller is
reduced by a factor of two, the pressure performance
(at the same rotational speed) will be reduced by a factor of
four, the pumping speed by a factor of nine, but the power
consumption will be reduced 32 times. This is very valuable
information for the selection of the type of impeller and the
number of stages employed for obtaining the overall
desired performance.
Fig. 7. An example of desired performance characteristics in a truly
hybrid pump for a sequence of 12 stages.
In the steady-state or quasi-steady-state conditions, mass
flow through all the stages is constant, so limiting mass
flow (throughput, in high-vacuum terminology) of all
stages must reach a certain prescribed or desired maximum
value. The selection of type of impellers, progressing from
inlet to discharge of the pump, should be made in analogy
to ones shown in Fig. 6, where the relative regions of
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M.H. Hablanian / Vacuum 82 (2008) 61–65
practicality are shown for pressure and volumetric flow
requirements. The overall assembly of chosen stage designs
and their performances should follow the curves shown in
Fig. 7. For the inlet stages, to obtain highest pumping
speed it may be better not to demand a high pressure ratio;
at the exit stages, a high-pressure ratio device may be
impractical because of the existence of pressure gradients
that develop backward flow tendency; power curve must be
kept as flat as possible to prevent, among other things,
overheating. In addition to selection of suitable impellers,
in turbopumps power can be controlled when necessary by
a reduction of rotational velocity via manipulation of
electrical power supply.
5. Conclusion
It seems that the basic engineering potential of turbine-
type pumps for use in high-vacuum technology is now well
65
understood. Actual design selections in the future can be
made to produce the required performance as established
by applications requirements and perhaps by marketing
considerations. The knowledge of the pressure-flow per-
formance of each stage and the effect of every appropriate
kind of impeller will permit designers and users to create a
suitable pump for particular application,
References
[1] Hablanian M. In: Thomas E, editor. Proceedings of the first inter-
national vacuum Congr Namur. Pergamon; 1960.
[2] Kruger C, Shapiro A. In: Meissner C, editor. seventh national vacuum
symposium. Pergamon, 1961.
[3] Wilson W, Santalo M, Oelrich J. Trans ASME 1955:1303.
[4] Hablanian M. Vac Tech. & Coat. 2000:40.
[5] Stones I. US patent 6,135,709, 10.24.2000.
[6] Hunsaker J, Rightmire B. Engineering applications of fluid dynamics.
New York: McGraw-Hill; 1947.