TY - JOUR
T1 - Unsteady hydraulic simulation of the cavitating part load vortex rope in Francis turbines
AU - Brammer, J.
AU - Segoufin, C.
AU - Duparchy, F.
AU - Lowys, P. Y.
AU - Favrel, A.
AU - Avellan, F.
N1 - Funding Information:
The research leading to the results published in this paper is part of the HYPERBOLE research project, granted by the European Commission (ERC/FP7- ENERGY-2013-1-Grant 608532).
Publisher Copyright:
© Published under licence by IOP Publishing Ltd.
PY - 2017/4/4
Y1 - 2017/4/4
N2 - For Francis turbines at part load operation a helical vortex rope is formed due to the swirling nature of the flow exiting the runner. This vortex creates pressure fluctuations which can lead to power swings, and the unsteady loading can lead to fatigue damage of the runner. In the case that the vortex rope cavitates there is the additional risk that hydro-acoustic resonance can occur. It is therefore important to be able to accurately simulate this phenomenon to address these issues. In this paper an unsteady, multi-phase CFD model was used to simulate two part-load operating points, for two different cavitation conditions. The simulation results were validated with test-rig data, and showed very good agreement. These results also served as an input for FEA calculations and fatigue analysis, which are presented in a separate study.
AB - For Francis turbines at part load operation a helical vortex rope is formed due to the swirling nature of the flow exiting the runner. This vortex creates pressure fluctuations which can lead to power swings, and the unsteady loading can lead to fatigue damage of the runner. In the case that the vortex rope cavitates there is the additional risk that hydro-acoustic resonance can occur. It is therefore important to be able to accurately simulate this phenomenon to address these issues. In this paper an unsteady, multi-phase CFD model was used to simulate two part-load operating points, for two different cavitation conditions. The simulation results were validated with test-rig data, and showed very good agreement. These results also served as an input for FEA calculations and fatigue analysis, which are presented in a separate study.
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U2 - 10.1088/1742-6596/813/1/012020
DO - 10.1088/1742-6596/813/1/012020
M3 - Conference article
AN - SCOPUS:85017430187
SN - 1742-6588
VL - 813
JO - Journal of Physics: Conference Series
JF - Journal of Physics: Conference Series
IS - 1
M1 - 012020
T2 - HYdropower Plants PERformance and FlexiBle Operation Towards Lean Integration of New Renewable Energies Symposium, HYPERBOLE 2017
Y2 - 2 February 2017 through 3 February 2017
ER -