Pump hump characteristic research based on mass transfer equation

Abstract

The current development of modern pumped storage plants aims towards a higher flexibility in operation, an extended operation range of the hydraulic machine (especially in the pumping mode), and a higher reliability. The pumping requirements are the crucial design drivers, since, even if the turbine mode performance is very sound, the success of a project depends also on the pump turbine delivering the required maximum pump head and starting reliably in pump mode. Pump hump (pump instability working points at highest head) which is an instability source to the pump-turbine vibration is a serious damage to the pump operation on high head. So the pump hump and cavitation number based on the numerical simulation and experiment results are shown in this paper. The pump hump is sensitive affected by the cavitation number. With the cavitation number decreasing, the hump on flow characteristic curve (e.g. head-flow rate curve, H-Q curve) is gradually decreasing until vanished. Predicting cavitating flows with multi-phase CFD computations is still a very challenging task. Some results of ongoing work in this field are presented. The hump on H-Q curve with cavitation number is discussed in this paper.