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Investigation on reversible pump turbine flow structures and associated pressure field characteristics under different guide vane openings

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Abstract

The use of reversible pump turbines (RPT) within pumped storage power plants goes with prolonged periods of off-design operating conditions, which leads to the onset of operating mode-dependent instabilities. In order to decrease the gravity of RPT flow instabilities and associated damages or even completely eliminate them, a deep understanding of its onset and development mechanism is needed. In line with this, the present study seeks to numerically investigate the onset and development mechanism of RPT unsteady flow structures as well as the evolutional characteristics of associated pressure pulsations throughout the RPT complete flow passage, under off-design conditions for three GVOs namely 17, 21, and 25 mm. The study results showed that low torque operating conditions and associated vaneless space back flow structures were the trigger of flow unsteadiness onset within the RPT vaneless space, the instabilities which grew to cause the S-shape characteristics appearance. Moreover, the runner flow unsteadiness was found to decrease with the GVO increase. On the other hand, the GVO increase worsened the pressure pulsation levels within RPT flow zones, where pressure pulsations within the vaneless space and flow zones in its vicinities were found to be the most sensitive to GVO changes.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Energy Science and Engineering, Harbin Institute of Technology, Harbin, 150001, China

    Maxime Binama, WenTao Su, WeiHua Cai, Alex Muhirwa, RuZhi Gong & David W. Wekesa

  2. School of Energy and Power, Shenyang Institute of Engineering, Shenyang, 110136, China

    WenTao Su

  3. School of Energy and Power Engineering, Northeast Electric Power University, Jilin, 132012, China

    WeiHua Cai

  4. Sino-French Institute of Nuclear Engineering and Technology, Sun Yat-Sen University, Zhuhai, 519082, China

    FengChen Li

  5. State Key Laboratory of Hydropower Equipment, Harbin Institute of Large Electric Machinery, Harbin, 150040, China

    XianZhu Wei

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  1. Maxime Binama
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  2. WenTao Su
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  3. WeiHua Cai
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  4. FengChen Li
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  5. XianZhu Wei
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  8. David W. Wekesa
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Corresponding authors

Correspondence to WenTao Su or WeiHua Cai.

Additional information

This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (Grant No. 51606050), Chinese Postdoctoral Science Foundation (Grant No. 2016M591527), Heilongjiang Postdoctoral Fund (Grant No. LBH-Z16057), Natural Science Foundation of Heilongjiang Province (Grant No. E2017038), and the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No. HIT.NSRIF.2019062).

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Binama, M., Su, W., Cai, W. et al. Investigation on reversible pump turbine flow structures and associated pressure field characteristics under different guide vane openings. Sci. China Technol. Sci. 62, 2052–2074 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11431-018-9478-4

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