Investigation of Flow Characteristics of Flow Passage Components in Francis Turbine under No-load and 50% Load operating conditions

Abstract

Due to the varying demand of power grid for the electric supply of hydraulic power stations, the units are often under low-load operating condition and no-load standby state, causing a significant flow instability in hydraulic generator units. To further investigate the inside flow characteristics of hydraulic turbines under such operating conditions. In this study, a CFD (computational fluid dynamics) numerical simulation with applying RNG (Renorm alization Group) k-ε turbulence model is performed to study the inside flow characteristics of each flow passage components of a Francis turbine under no-load and 50% load conditions. The results indicate that under the two operating conditions, the flow distribution inside and outside the draft tube pier is significantly nonuniform. Simultaneously, the large-scale vortex in the runner area caused by the high-speed flow in the vane-free area with small opening and the nonuniform flow velocity distribution in the straight cone section of the draft tube are the main reasons for the increase of hydraulic loss and the decrease of efficiency.