• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.7 no.2
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• pp.42-53
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• 2014

Phase resonance in Francis type hydraulic turbine is studied. The phase resonance is a phenomenon that the pressure fluctuation in the penstock of hydraulic turbine installation can become very large when the pressure waves from each guide vane caused by the interaction with the runner vane reach the penstock with the same phase. Experimental and numerical studies have been carried out using a centrifugal fan. In the present study, comparisons between the pump mode and the turbine mode operations are made. The experimental and numerical results show that the rotational direction of the rotor does not affect characteristics of the pressure fluctuation but the propagation direction of the rotorstator interaction mode plays an important role. Flow rate fluctuations through the stator are examined numerically. It has been found that the blade passing flow rate fluctuation component can be evaluated by the difference of the fluctuating pressure at the inlet and the outlet of the stator. The amplitude of the blade passage component of the pressure fluctuation is greater at the stator inlet than the one at the stator outlet. The rotor-stator interaction mode component is almost identical at the inlet and the outlet of the stator. It was demonstrated that the pressure fluctuation in the volute and connecting pipe normalized by the flow rate fluctuation becomes the same for pump and turbine mode operations, and depends on the rotational direction on the interaction mode.

• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.10 no.2
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• pp.154-163
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• 2017

Performance characteristics in pump mode of pump-turbines are vital for the safe and effective operation of pumped storage power plants. However, the head characteristics are different under different guide vane openings. In this paper, 3-D steady simulations were performed under 13mm, 19mm and 25mm guide vane openings. Three groups of operating points under the three GVOs were chosen based on experimental validation to investigate the influence of guide vane setting on flow patterns upstream and downstream. The results reveal that, the guide vane setting will obviously change the flow pattern downstream, which in turn influences the flow upstream. It shows a strong effect on hydraulic loss (power dissipation) in the guide and stay vanes. It is also found that the hydraulic loss mainly comes from the flow separation and vortices. In addition, in some operating conditions, the change of guide vane opening will change the flow angle at the runner inlet and outlet, which will change the Euler momentum (power input). The joint action of Euler momentum and hydraulic loss results in the change of the head characteristics.

• International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems
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• v.3 no.4
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• pp.315-323
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• 2010

This work investigates the influence of water compressibility on pressure pulsations induced by rotor-stator interaction (RSI) in hydraulic machinery, using the commercial CFD solver ANSYS-CFX. A pipe flow example with harmonic velocity excitation at the inlet plane is simulated using different grid densities and time step sizes. Results are compared with a validated code for hydraulic networks (SIMSEN). Subsequently, the solution procedure is applied to a simplified 2.5-dimensional pump-turbine configuration in prototype with different speeds of sound as well as in model scale with an adapted speed of sound. Pressure fluctuations are compared with numerical and experimental data based on prototype scale. The good agreement indicates that the scaling of acoustic effects with an adapted speed of sound works well. With respect to pressure fluctuation amplitudes along the centerline of runner channels, incompressible solutions exhibit a linear decrease while compressible solutions exhibit sinusoidal distributions with maximum values at half the channel length, coinciding with analytical solutions of one-dimensional acoustics. Furthermore, in compressible simulation the amplification of pressure fluctuations is observed from the inlet of stay vane channels to the spiral case wall. Finally, the procedure is applied to a three-dimensional pump configuration in model scale with adapted speed of sound. Normalized Pressure fluctuations are compared with results from prototype measurements. Compared to incompressible computations, compressible simulations provide similar pressure fluctuations in vaneless space, but pressure fluctuations in spiral case and penstock may be much higher.