• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.19 no.1
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• pp.5-10
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• 2016

As a key component of a Francis turbine facility, the runner performance plays a vital role in the performance of the turbine. It is effective and successful to design a Francis turbine runner blade with good performance by one dimensional hydraulic design method. On the basis of one dimensional hydraulic analysis, there are a lot of parameters of the internal flow passage shapes determined by experience. Among those parameters, the effect of port area of blade on the performance of a Francis turbine is investigated in this study. A given Francis turbine model was selected for investigating the port area of blade on the performance. The result shows that the effect of port area of runner blade on the outflow angle from runner passage on the performance is quite significant. A correct exit flow angle reduces the energy loss at draft tube, which has the best efficiency of the turbine model.

• Journal of Advanced Marine Engineering and Technology
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• v.40 no.8
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• pp.698-703
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• 2016

Francis hydro turbines have been most widely used throughout the world because of their wide range of head and flow rate applications. In most applications, they are used for high heads and flow rates. Currently, Korea is developing technology for Francis hydro turbine design and manufacture. In order to understand the internal details of Francis hydro turbines further, a new Francis turbine model runner is designed and model internal flow characteristics are investigated. The specific speed of the Francis hydro turbine model runner is $Ns=200m-kW-min^{-1}$. The runner blade is designed successfully according to the port area and one-dimensional loss analysis. The best efficiency point of the Francis hydro turbine model achieves 90% at the design condition. CFD analysis yields a hill chart of the Francis hydro turbine model for use in predicting performance.

• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.2 no.4
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• pp.392-399
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• 2009

The paper concerns the description of the step by step development process of the new fixed blade runner called "Mixer" suitable for the uprating of the Francis turbines units installed at the older low head hydropower plants. In the paper the details of hydraulic and mechanical design are presented. Since the rotational speed of the new runner is significantly higher then the rotational speed of the original Francis one, the direct coupling of the turbine to the generator can be applied. The maximum efficiency at prescribed operational point was reached by the geometry optimization of two most important components. In the first step the optimization of the draft tube geometry was carried out. The condition for the draft tube geometry optimization was to design the new geometry of the draft tube within the original bad draft tube shape without any extensive civil works. The runner blade geometry optimization was carried out on the runner coupled with the draft tube domain. The blade geometry of the runner was optimized using automatic direct search optimization procedure. The method used for the objective function minimum search is a kind of the Nelder-Mead simplex method. The objective function concerns efficiency, required net head and cavitation features. After successful hydraulic design the modal and stress analysis was carried out on the prototype scale runner. The static pressure distribution from flow simulation was used as a load condition. The modal analysis in air and in water was carried out and the results were compared. The final runner was manufactured in model scale and it is going to be tested in hydraulic laboratory. Since the turbine with the fixed blade runner does not allow double regulation like in case of full Kaplan turbine, it can be profitably used mainly at power plants with smaller changes of operational conditions or in case with more units installed. The advantages are simple manufacturing, installation and therefore lower expenses and short delivery time for turbine uprating.

• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.183-192
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• 2015

The aim of this study was comparative analysis of sediment-induced erosion on optimized design and traditional design of Francis runner blade. The analysis was conducted through laboratory experiments in a test rig called Rotating Disc Apparatus. The results showed that the extent of erosion was significantly less in the optimized design when compared based on the material loss. It was observed that the optimized design could reduce sediment erosion by about 14.4% if it was used in place of the reference design for entire duration of the experiment. Based on the observations and results obtained, it has been concluded that the optimization of hydraulic design of blade profile of Francis runner can significantly reduce the effect of sediment-induced erosion.

• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.209-219
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• 2015

A robust multi-fidelity optimization methodology has been developed, focusing on efficiently handling industrial runner design of hydraulic Francis turbines. The computational task is split between low- and high-fidelity phases in order to properly balance the CFD cost and required accuracy in different design stages. In the low-fidelity phase, a physics-based surrogate optimization loop manages a large number of iterative optimization evaluations. Two derivative-free optimization methods use an inviscid flow solver as a physics-based surrogate to obtain the main characteristics of a good design in a relatively fast iterative process. The case study of a runner design for a low-head Francis turbine indicates advantages of integrating two derivative-free optimization algorithms with different local- and global search capabilities.

• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.8 no.4
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• pp.294-303
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• 2015

The present study is conducted to identify a better design and optimal number of Francis runner blades for sediment laden high head micro hydropower site, Tara Khola in the Baglung district of Nepal. The runner is designed with in-house code and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis is performed to evaluate the performance with three configurations; 11, 13 and 17 numbers of runner blades. The three sets of runners were also investigated for the sediment erosion tendency. The runner with 13 blades shows better performance at design as well as in variable discharge conditions. 96.2% efficiency is obtained from the runner with 13 blades at the design point, and the runners with 17 and 11 blades have 88.25% and 76.63% efficiencies respectively. Further, the runner with 13 blades has better manufacturability than the runner with 17 blades as it has long and highly curved blade with small gaps between the blades, but it comes with 65% more erosion tendency than in the runner with 17 blades.

• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.7 no.3
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• pp.101-109
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• 2014

Sediment erosion is one of the key challenges in hydraulic turbines from a design and maintenance perspective in Himalayas. The present study focuses on choosing the best design in terms of blade angle distribution of a Francis turbine runner which has least erosion effect without influencing the efficiency and the structural integrity. A fully coupled Fluid-Structure-Interaction (FSI) analysis was performed through a multi-field solver, which showed that the maximum stress induced in the optimized design for better sediment handling, is less than that induced in the reference design. Some numerical validation techniques have been shown for both CFD and FSI analysis.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.18 no.5
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• pp.19-25
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• 2015

As a core component of a hydropower station, hydro turbines play a vital role in the integration of a power station. Research on the technology of hydro turbine is continuously increasing with the development of water electricity. On the basis of one-dimensional loss analysis, for three-dimension design, there are a lot of dimension of the internal flow passage shapes that are determined by experience. Therefore, the effect of the internal flow passage shapes on the performance and internal flow characteristics of a Francis hydro turbine model is investigated in this study. In this study, the small curvature of runner blade trailing edge shape is good for improving the efficiency of Francis turbine. The straight stay vane leading edge is good for suppressing the secondary flow. Moreover, suitable tongue passage shape and stay vane number improve the performance of the turbine considerably.

• The KSFM Journal of Fluid Machinery
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• v.16 no.4
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• pp.10-14
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• 2013

In this study, we have numerically investigated the hydraulic efficiency with various values of discharge angle($11^{\circ}$, $12^{\circ}$, $14^{\circ}$, $15^{\circ}$, $17^{\circ}$, $18^{\circ}$, $20^{\circ}$) in the Francis turbine of hydropower generation under 15MW with fixed values of head range of 151m and flow rate($10.97m^3/s$). We also conducted the numerical analysis with constant inlet angle in the Francis turbine using the commercial code, ANSYS CFX. Hydraulic characteristics for different values of the runner blade angle are investigated. The results showed that the change of discharge angles significantly influenced on the performance of the turbine hydraulic efficiency.

• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.8 no.3
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• pp.169-182
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• 2015

When simulating the dynamic behaviour of a hydro power plant, it is essential to have a good representation of the turbine behaviour. The pressure transients in the system occurs because the flow changes, which the turbine defines. The flow through the turbine is a function of the pressure, the speed of rotation and the wicket gate opening and is, most often described in a performance diagram or Hill diagram. In the Hill diagram, the efficiency is drawn like contour lines, hence the name. A turbines Hill diagram is obtained by performance tests on scaled model in a laboratory. However, system dynamic simulations have to be performed in the early stage of a project, before the turbine manufacturer has been chosen and the Hill diagram is known. Therefore one have to rely on diagrams for a turbine with similar speed number. The Hill diagram is drawn through measured points, so for using the diagram in a simulation program, one have to iterate in the diagram based on curve fitting of the measured points. This paper describes an alternative method. By means of the Euler turbine equation, it is possible to set up two differential equations which represents the turbine performance with good enough accuracy for the dynamic simulations. The only input is the turbine's main geometry, the runner blade in- and outlet angle and the guide vane angle at best efficiency point of operation (BEP). In the paper, simulated turbine characteristics for a high head Francis turbine, and for a reversible pump turbine are compared with laboratory measured characteristics.