Francis Hydro Turbine Research Articles

Internal Flow Characteristics in the Draft Tube of a Francis Turbine

Suppression of abnormal flow phenomena in the Francis hydro turbine is very important to improve the turbine performance. Especially, as cavitation and cavitation surge makes serious problems when the turbine is operated in the range of partial flow rate, optimum method of suppressing the abnormal flow characteristics is required necessarily. Moreover, as swirl flow in the draft tube of the Francis turbine decreases pressure at the inlet of the draft tube, suppression of the swirl flow can be an useful method of suppressing the occurrence of cavitation. In order to clarifying the possibility of suppressing the swirl flow by J-Groove in the draft tube, a series of CFD analysis has been conducted in the range of partial load, designed condition and excessive flow rate of a Francis turbine. A kind of J-Groove is designed and applied to the draft tube of the Francis hydro turbine model. The pressure contours, circumferential velocity vectors and vortex core regions in the draft tube are compared by the conditions with or without J-Groove. In addition, a group of data about the velocity in the draft is presented to show the influence of J-Groove.

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF HIGH REYNOLDS NUMBER TURBULENT FLOW IN A VANE PASSAGE

The numerical simulations of two-dimensional high Reynolds number turbulent flow in a guide vane passage of a Francis hydro turbine are performed successfully by using the unstructured dynamic mesh model for moving body. The standard K – ε turbulence model is employed for the simulation of turbulence. The pressure-velocity coupling method is realized with the SIMPLEC algorithm. The temporal distributions of the pressure and turbulent viscosity in a passage were obtained in the closing of wicket gate on a platform of the software ANSYS FLUENT. The results show that the evolution of the flow field is unsteady with decrease of the geometrical opening of the gate. The details of the flow changes are obtained in the moving rigid body domain. The method can be used to simulate the high Reynolds number incompressible turbulent flow with moving boundary. The calculation provides some references for vortex-induced vibration of the structure in a complex turbulent flow.

Steady-state capabilities for hydroturbines with OpenFOAM

The availability of a high quality Open Source CFD simulation platform like OpenFOAM offers new R&D opportunities by providing direct access to models and solver implementation details. Efforts have been made by Hydro-Québec to adapt OpenFOAM to hydroturbines for the development of steady-state capabilities. The paper describes the developments that have been made to implement new turbomachinery related capabilities: Multiple Frame of Reference solver, domain coupling interfaces (GGI, cyclicGGI and mixing plane) and specialized boundary conditions. Practical use of the new turbomachinery capabilities are demonstrated for the analysis of a 195-MW Francis hydroturbine.

Turbulent flow simulation using LES with dynamical mixed one‐equation subgrid models in complex geometries

AbstractAn innovative computational model is presented for the large eddy simulation of multi‐dimensional unsteady turbulent flow problems in complex geometries. The main objectives of this research are (i) to better understand the structure of turbulent flows in complex geometry and (ii) to investigate the 3D characteristics of such complex fluid flow. The filtered Navier–Stokes equations are used to simulate large scales of the turbulence, while the energy transfer from large scales to subgrid‐scales (SGS) is simulated using dynamical mixed one‐equation subgrid models. In the proposed SGS model, the SGS kinetic energy, ksgs, is used for scaling the velocity for the eddy‐viscosity part of the model. The proposed SGS model contains not only some information on the small scales as described in traditional Smagorinsky model or Germano dynamical model but also includes additional scale‐similarity as that in the models of Ghosal et al. (J. Comput. Phys. 1995; 118:24–37) or Davidson (11th International Symposium on Turbulent Shear Flow, Grenoble, vol. 3, 1997; 26.1–26.6). The Navier–Stokes equations and the derived ksgs equation are solved using implicit finite‐volume method. The models have been applied to simulate the 3D flows over a backward‐facing step and in a strong 3D skew runner blade passage of a Francis hydro turbine, respectively. Good agreement between simulated results and experimental results as well as other numerical results was obtained. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Strongly coupled simulation of fluid–structure interaction in a Francis hydroturbine

AbstractThis work simulates a complex fluid flow in fluid–structure interaction (FSI). The flow under consideration is governed by Navier–Stokes equations for incompressible viscous fluids and modeled with the finite volume method. Large eddy simulation is used to simulate the unsteady turbulent flow. The structure is represented by a finite element formulation. The present work introduces a strongly coupled partitioned approach that is applied to complex flow in fluid machinery. In this approach, the fluid and structure equations are solved separately using different solvers, but are implicitly coupled into one single module based on sensitivity analysis of the important displacement and stress modes. The applied modes and their responses are used to build up a reduced‐order model. The proposed model is used to predict the unsteady flow fields of a 3D complete passage, involving in stay, guide vanes, and runner blades, for a Francis hydro turbine and FSI is considered. The computational results show that a fairly good convergence solution is achieved by using the reduced‐order model that is based on only a few displacement and stress modes, which largely reduces the computational cost, compared with traditional approaches. At the same time, a comparison of the numerical results of the model with available experimental data validates the methodology and assesses its accuracy. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Study on turbulence features near an oscillating curved wall

In pursuit of possibly true turbulent characters and for exploring a change in turbulence structures near an oscillating flexible wall-curved surface, a sinusoidal oscillation mode was forced to a curved wall, whose vibrations disturbed the flow with an interacting effort between the fluid and the structure. The methodology used was the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) with fluid-structure interaction. The oscillating configuration was on a Fourier sinusoidal mode from the measurements of a Francis hydro turbine blade vibration. The effects of the vibration on the skin friction coefficient, vortices, turbulent coherent structures, and other statistical quantities were studied. The results showed that the streamwise velocity gradient along the normal direction and the normal velocity gradient along the spanwise direction were considerably increased within the viscous sublayer because of the oscillating wall, which additionally caused the low speed streaks to stay away from the wall and the high-momentum flows to be toward the wall. As a result, the streamwise vortices were much more elongated along the downstream to get an energy balance, and the wall skin friction coefficient or the wall friction velocity rose up.

Large-eddy simulation of turbulent flow considering inflow wakes in a Francis turbine blade passage

Turbulent flow in a 3-D blade passage of a Francis hydro turbine was simulated with the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) to investigate the spatial and temporal distributions of the turbulence when strongly distorted wakes in the inflow sweep over the passage. In a suitable consideration of the energy exchanging mechanism between the large and small scales in the complicated passage with a strong 3-D curvature, one-coefficient dynamic Sub-Grid-Scale (SGS) stress model was used in this article. The simulations show that the strong wakes in the inflow lead to a flow separation at the leading zone of the passage, and to form a primary vortex in the span-wise direction. The primary span-wise vortex evolves and splits into smaller vortex pairs due to the constraint of no-slip wall condition, which triggers losing stability of the flow in the passage. The computed pressures on the pressure and suction sides agree with the measured data for a working test turbine model.

Intrinsic features of turbulent flow in strongly 3-D skew blade passage of a francis turbine

The turbulent flow, with the Reynolds number of 5.9 × 10 5, in the strongly 3-D skew blade passage of a true Francis hydro turbine was simulated by the Large Eddy Simulation (LES) approach to investigate the spatial and temporal distributions of the fully developed turbulence in the passage with strongly 3-D complex geometry. The simulations show that the strong three-dimensionality of the passage has a great amplification effect on the turbulence in the passage, and the distributions of the turbulence are diversely nonuniform, for instance, the rise of turbulent kinetic energy in the lower 1/3 region of the passage is more than 45%, whereas its rise in the upper 1/3 region is less than 1%. With the LES approach, the details of the flow structures at the near-wall surfaces of the blades could be obtained. Several turbulent spots were captured.

Numerical simulation of a turbulent flow in the Francis hydroturbine

Using the real Francis turbine as an example, we study the applicability of the standard k – ε turbulence model for predicting hydrodynamic losses in its flow passage. There is good agreement of local and integral flow characteristics calculated by the CADRUN program complex developed by the authors with experimental data.

Numerical simulation of a turbulent flow in the Francis hydroturbine

Using the real Francis turbine as an example, we study the applicability of the standard k–ε turbulence model for predicting hydrodynamic losses in its flow passage. There is good agreement of local and integral flow characteristics calculated by the CADRUN program complex developed by the authors with experimental data.

Geometrical Error Analysis and Control for 5-axis Machining of Large sculptured surfaces

One of the important tasks in five-axis machining of large sculptured surfaces is to control and reduce the machined errors. This paper presents the methods to control geometrical errors based on the establishment of the link between geometrical errors and the parameters of tool path planning. Nonlinear errors, which are the majority of geometrical errors during five-axis machining, are is strictly analysed and formulated. An adaptive step length method is proposed to control effectively the cutter contact path error. The measures to reduce the scallop error in machining of the large sculptured surfaces are discussed also. With the combination of this research with CAM software, both large Kaplan and Francis hydroturbine blades have been successfully machined. It shows that the machined errors can be controlled effectively and the machining efficiency can be improved in the machining of the large sculptured surfaces by the proposed methods.