Abstract
Abstract Sediment erosion of hydro turbines is prevalent and serious in the mountain river region. The effect of operating head and particle diameter on sediment erosion was investigated in this paper. A Eulerian-Lagrangian approach was applied to numerically simulate the solid-liquid flow in a Francis turbine under the minimum, design and maximum heads. Five typical diameters (0.1, 0.3, 0.5, 0.7, 0.9 mm) were firstly determined based on field measurements at a hydropower station. After tracking the trajectories of sediment particles, McLaury model was selected to predict the erosion rate. The results show that sediment erosion regions of runner blades are similar under different operating heads, while the sediment erosion rates amplify significantly with the increase of operating heads. The erosion rate of blade suction side is significantly higher than that of pressure side because of the effect of inter-blade vortices between runner blades. Sediment diameters also play an important role in accelerating erosion rate, which indicate that setting up sedimentation tanks to settle large-size sediment particles is a powerful method to alleviate sediment erosion. This study can provide a reference for erosion estimation and operational maintenance of hydro turbines in mountain river region.
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