Improving Hydro Turbine Performance with CFD

摘要

Loss calculations based on the values of the total pressures at the inlet and outlet of the respective cases gave a relative improvements of 43% for the case where splitters were used. While this is still a 2-D case, and does not fully replicate real 3-D conditions, it is encouraging to see the significant improvement obtained due to the application of splitters. From the point of view of overall flow performance the inclusion of splitters in a carefully chosen pattern appears to be a very interesting and potentially attractive alternative to changing the shape of the stay vanes. Further work is being conducted to build a complete 3-dimensional CFD model to more accurately predict the complex flow in hydro turbine stationary components. The authors would like to thank BC Hydro personnel for many informative discussions during the course of this work, and also for supporting the research.