Development of a test rig for investigating the performance of a model Francis turbine

Abstract

Sediments flowing with water in the Himalayan Rivers of Nepal erodes the components of the turbine heavily. The design of hydraulic turbines prioritizes the hydraulic performance of the turbine, neglecting erosion challenges. The necessity of turbine design and its model testing has been felt in the past two decades in Nepal. An attempt is made to fill such conditions by developing a test rig for testing the 92 kW model Francis turbine at Turbine Testing Lab, Kathmandu University, Nepal. The model turbine is a scaled-down model of a 4.1 MW Francis turbine of a Jhimruk Hydropower Plant in Nepal severely affected by sediment erosion. The design of the prototype turbine was carried out considering the hydraulic performance as well as erosion resistivity. The prototype turbine was scaled-down utilising model similarity conditions to meet the lab’s specifications. Each component of the rig has been optimized using CFD to match the lab’s specifications. Comparing the results from CFD and experiment on velocity, pressure, torque, and RPM measurements were comparable.