Abstract
Hydraulic turbines are designed for the available head and flow rate of the hydroelectric power plant. Design point usually gives the best efficiency. However, when the turbine is used at off-design conditions where the flow rate and head change mostly because of seasonal fluctuations, efficiency significantly reduces. Therefore, the objective of hydraulic turbine design is not only satisfying the power requirements and maximum efficiency at the design point, but also improved characteristics at off-design conditions. In this work, a 4.3 MW Francis turbine is designed with the help of Computational fluid dynamics. All turbine components are designed separately, and then full turbine analyses are performed to confirm the design. Once an efficient design is obtained for the design head and flow rate, CFD simulations for off-design conditions are performed to confirm the high efficiency of the turbine at these flow rate-head combinations. The efficiency of the designed turbine is in the range of 90 to 92 % for a wide range of head and flow rates.
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Recommended by Associate Editor Seong Hyuk Lee
Selin Aradag obtained her B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Department of Mechanical Engineering of Middle East Technical University in 2000 and 2002, respectively. She graduated from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, USA in 2006 with a Ph.D. degree in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering. After spending two years as a Research Engineer at US Air Force Academy, Colorado Springs, USA, she joined the Faculty of TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Department of Mechanical Engineering in 2008. She is the recipient of Turkish Academy of Sciences Distinguished Young Scientist Award in 2010. She is a senior member of American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and served at the Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee of AIAA from 2006 to 2010. She is currently the Director of of TOBB ETU Hydro Energy Research Laboratory (ETU Hydro). Her areas of expertise are Fluid Mechanics, Aerodynamics, Heat exchangers and Hydro energy.
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Aradag, S., Akin, H. & Celebioglu, K. CFD based design of a 4.3MW Francis turbine for improved performance at design and off-design conditions. J Mech Sci Technol 31, 5041–5049 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-017-0952-0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12206-017-0952-0