A Novel Guide Vane System Design to Mitigate Rotating Vortex Rope in High Head Francis Model Turbine

Abstract

Guide vanes are a mechanical system used to direct flow in the desired direction. At lower operating conditions, implementing a guide vane system in the draft tube of a hydro-turbine can decrease the excess swirl in the flow and, thus, reduce pressure fluctuations. The present study discusses a numerical methodology to design an effective guide vane system in the draft tube of a high head Francis model turbine. The numerical method is computationally efficient and thus, saves excess computational time and data storage required for parametric analysis of the guide vane system. The aim is to mitigate the ‘rotating’ vortex rope with minimum additional losses in the turbine. The factors considered for the guide vane system design are a) number of guide vanes, b) chord length, c) span, d) inlet-outlet angles of the guide vanes, and e) their position in the draft tube. The parametric study comprises a) ideal guide vane design and b) realistic guide vane design study. The ideal guide vane design study was with the standalone draft tube domain. The realistic guide vane design study used the passage domains of the distributor, runner, and complete draft tube. From the ideal guide vane design study, a guide vane system with two or three guide vanes of chord 86% of runner radius and leading-edge span of 30% of runner radius effectively mitigates the rotating vortex rope. The system with three guide vanes is the most efficient when placed at some distance below the runner exit with mitigation above 95%