Abstract
Hydropower has been one of the mature renewable energy systems encompassing a major fraction of renewable energy. Archimedean screw turbines are gaining new interest in hydropower generation that are suitable for low head applications. This paper empirically and experimentally studies the flow inside Archimedean screw turbines along with the influence of blade numbers on their performance. The major objective of this work is to investigate performance and conduct design optimization of a screw turbine operating under ultra-low head (<0.2 m) conditions. Experimentally verified empirical results show its reliability in estimating the performance of turbines at low operational speeds. Further, the results show that with the increasing number of blades, the efficiency and power generation capacity can be increased, but the overall performance improvement relative to one blade turbine peaks at around 7 blades. Increasing the power generation capacity can in turn make the turbine compact and could be fabricated at a low-cost.
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