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Article history: In this work, a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis was performed to obtain a new geometry
Received 3 October 2015 that provides increased efficiency in a 500-kW Francis turbine. This analysis was developed in two parts:
Received in revised form The first stage of the work was focused on the elements of the turbine that are not related to the runner’s
11 May 2016
blade profile, such as the covers, the stay vanes/guide vanes and certain zones of the runner. The second
Accepted 11 May 2016
Available online 25 May 2016
stage of the work was focused on improving the blade profile. To this end, due to the complexity of the
geometry, a methodology that combines factorial experiments, Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), and
optimizations based on Genetic Algorithms (GA) was implemented. In the first stage of the process, the
Keywords:
Francis turbine
modifications increased the efficiency by six points. In the second stage, the recirculation of fluid and the
Computational fluid dynamics cavitation phenomenon in the runner blade were reduced, the latter being the main cause of wear in the
Geometry optimization current runner. The final geometry was simulated in a CFD solver, which predicted an increase of 14.77%
Artificial neural networks in the efficiency of the current point for the highest power. Finally, static strength, fatigue and resonance
Genetic algorithm were verified in turbine components affected by the modifications.
© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.renene.2016.05.044
0960-1481/© 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
978 L.A. Teran et al. / Renewable Energy 96 (2016) 977e992
two-dimensional models of previous designs stored in a database current turbine was developed to obtain information about the
with the goal of training the ANN. The methodology used increases problems facing the turbine. This model was validated with
the design process velocity by reducing the computational effort experimental data acquired in performance tests developed in the
and operator intervention. Einsigier and Ruprecht [12] used several power plant facilities. The obtained results were used to conduct a
mathematical optimization algorithms to investigate the best way first improvement based on a full factorial experiment design of the
to improve the efficiency of a Francis turbine’s draft tube. They geometries that are not related to the runner blade profile, such as
found that an algorithm based on search directions (approximation the covers, the guide vanes and certain zones of the runner. In the
of the gradients) was the fastest in terms of employed time; how- second part, an optimization process based on ANN and GA was
ever, they established that it can lead to the detection of a local used to improve the runner blade profile. A more detailed expla-
minimum instead of a global minimum. Derakhshan and Mustafavi nation of each step of this process is presented in the following
[13] applied a multi-objective optimization procedure based on subsections.
ANN and GA coupled to CFD code with the goal of improving the
efficiency of a Francis turbine at the best efficiency point (BEP) by
optimizing the runner geometry. The efficiency was eventually 2.1. Flow simulation definition and experimental validation
increased by almost 2 points.
Choi el al. [1] numerically and experimentally evaluated the To validate the output CFD results, a first simulation of the
performance of an optimized 500-kW Francis turbine. As a prin- complete current Francis turbine was conducted. Due to the
cipal result, they obtained an increase in peak efficiency of 9.93%. complexity of the runner blade’s geometry, it was necessary to
Similarly, Yang and Shu [14] optimized the hydrofoil of a helical obtain a plaster model profile, which was followed by a 3D scan-
vertical axis turbine for power generation from marine current ning process (Fig. 1). The scanner used in the process has a
using traditional GA. The experimental validation of the optimized dimensional accuracy of 0.38 mm, and comparisons with the real
geometry showed improvements in the efficiency of the device. model results in differences of 0.8 mm. Due to the severe wear
Thapa et al. [8] optimized the runner blade’s profile by changing the facing the runner blades, it was necessary to use the specialized
blade angle distribution using five shapes, with the objective of turbo-machinery software ANSYS Bladegen to rebuild the missing
reducing the relative velocities that cause erosion wear on the section of the blade’s geometry. This software helped to complete
blade’s profile. The final CFD analysis shows that the changes in the the blade’s geometry using the information obtained from the
velocity distribution lead to a decreased erosion index up to 33%. scanning process. After this procedure, all geometry domains were
Flores et al. [15] showed in their work how a high-capacity Francis separately drawn in a Computer-Aided Design (CAD) system
turbine can be designed using specific methods that include local following the recommendations presented in Ref. [6], with the goal
and global optimization. The designs of the spiral case, the stay and of obtaining a simple means of discretizing the turbine’s domains.
guide vanes, the runner and the draft tube were developed with Each part of the domain was discretized with a structured mesh
optimization loops that use blade design tools, automatic meshing and hexahedral elements using the software ANSYS ICEM CFD; the
software and CFD code driven by a GA. complete domain was represented by 2,276,000 elements. The
In this work, a methodology based on experiment design, mesh was refined to improve the accuracy and the numerical
Artificial Neural Networks, a Genetic Algorithm and the experience convergence of the analysis. The independence between the results
of the people who work for the owner of the machines was used to and the mesh size was guaranteed with five simulations, by taking
improve the geometry of several components of a Francis turbine. the torque as the reference variable, as shown in Fig. 2, where the
The mechanical strength of the new geometries was also evaluated difference between the last three results is less than 3%. Therefore,
with the objective of ensuring the quality of results. the third mesh size was used in additional analysis in order to
minimize computational cost. Other authors [6] and tests results
showed that torque results are sufficiently accurate to perform this
2. Methodology type of comparison. The average value of the dimensionless
parameter yþ obtained in the runner and in the guide vanes was
The process used to improve the turbine’s performance was 44.5 and 64.5, respectively. The recommended values are between
undertaken in two main parts. First, a numerical model of the 20 and 200 if iterative design like the one used in this work is
Table 1
Measured variables in the experimental test.
Level in the upper reservoir Ultrasonic sensor Upper reservoir Current (4e20 mA) Meters above sea level ±2 mm ±13 mm
Level in the discharge Ultrasonic sensor Discharge channel Current (4e20 mA) Meters above sea level ±2 mm ±3.3 mm
Inlet pressure Digital pressure sensor Turbine inlet Current (4e20 mA) kPa ±0.4% ±0.1%
Torque Strain gage Turbine shaft Voltage (0e10 V) N-m ±0.25% ±0.28%
Axial force Strain gage Turbine shaft Voltage (0e10 V) N ±0.25% ±2.3%
Flow rate Ultrasonic flow rate sensor Penstock Current (4e20 mA) m3/s ±1% ±1.2%
Electric power Power sensor Electric board Current (4e20 mA) kW ±0.25% ±0.46%
Angular velocity Tachometer Turbine shaft Current (4e20 mA) rpm e ±0.07%
Guide vane opening LVDT sensor Servomotor Voltage (0e10 V) e ±0.25%
Fig. 6. Gap between covers and runner. (a) Modified geometry with Labyrinth (b) Current geometry without Labyrinth.
Stay vanes: In the current configuration of the turbine, the stay been identified thatrecent designs do not include these pro-
vanes are simply cylinders that apparently serve as structural tuberances. Hence, the modified guide vanes are denoted as þ1,
support. The turbine simulation results allowed us to identify flow and the current guide vanes are denoted as 1 (Fig. 8).
recirculation behind the cylinders that could generate energy losses
(Section 3.2, Fig. 18). A blade profile with the correct attack angle 2.3. Runner blade optimization
redirects the flow and simultaneously reduces flow recirculation
and drag, which would provide reduced energy losses. Based on The runner blade optimization was developed using a new
this fact, a blade profile similar to recent turbine constructions was methodology based on the work of Derakhshan et al. [13] and
chosen as a candidate to replace the current configuration. Thus, Kostrewa et al. [23], which combines Experiment Design (ED), ANN
the current configuration is considered as being a low level, iden- and GA optimization. Fig. 9 shows the schematic procedure
tified by 1, and a modified configuration with blade profiles is implemented in the optimization.
considered as being a high level, identified by þ1 (Fig. 7). The optimization process began by obtaining the geometry of
Guide vanes: Currently, these elements have a protuberance that the runner blade as explained in Section 2.1. In the next step, the
fills much of the blade profile’s area; in the simulation of the actual Objective Function (OF) was defined based on the requirements on
turbine, it was identified that these protuberances affect the fluid power, efficiency or cavitation. The geometry was then parame-
flow, thereby causing flow recirculation, which travels downstream terized using the software ANSYS Bladegen, which is specialized for
and degrades the turbine’s performance. On the other hand, it has turbomachinery, and a mathematical function that describes the
Fig. 7. (a) Blade profile stay vane (b) Current configuration with cylinders.
mean surface of a blade. The OF was directly related to these pa- solved during the optimization process.
rameters. The obtained geometry was meshed using the software
ANSYS Turbogrid, which is coupled to Bladegen and allows the
generation of an automatic structured mesh of the domain around 2.3.1. Artificial neural networks
the blade’s complex geometry. With the mesh available, a simula- The search for the global optimum that the GA performs re-
tion was conducted using the ANSYS CFX code. The obtained results quires the minimization of an OF, which, in this work, depends of
(performance) were compared to the requirements fixed in the OF; the solution of the flow equations obtained through CFD simula-
if the requirements were not satisfied, the optimization process tions. Such a simulation process utilizes significant computational
was to continue with database generation. This database should resources. Because the GA evaluates a large number of geometries
have a defined number of geometries based on the maximum in- that are associated with an OF value, this would require a large
formation about the available design space [24]. The database number of solutions obtained through CFD, and the process would
contains information generated by CFD about the performance be excessively costly in terms of computational resources.
related to several parameters that define the blade’s geometry. The To solve this problem, researchers such as Derakhshan et al. [13],
database was obtained through a full factorial experiment design Kostrewa, et al. [23] and Pierret et al. [11] have used ANN. In this
based on the work of Kostrewa et al. [23]. This information was case, the ANN is used in the calculation mechanism to obtain
used to train the ANN [25], which predicts the performance of a approximated solutions to the flow equations. This mechanism is
new geometry without using a CFD code, reducing the processing significantly faster than CFD; therefore, the evaluations that the GA
time from several minutes to seconds. The trained ANN was used as requires are going to be performed faster, and the process will be
the function to be minimized in the MATLAB code to find the more efficient.
optimal values of the parameters that define the blade’s geometry. An ANN is a computational model that imitates some
To accomplish this, an optimization GA [26] was used until the
global minimum was obtained. This minimum had a set of pa-
rameters that could be loaded into Bladegen to obtain a new
optimal geometry, which was meshed and simulated. The obtained
results in this new simulation were compared to the requirements;
if they did not fulfill them, the geometry was added to the database,
and a new ANN training and GA optimization process began. This
process was repeated until the requirements were met. The
convergence evolution of the OF in the runner blade’s optimization
process is presented in Fig. 10. It is observed that, as long as the
iterations continue, the difference in the OF between the ANN and
CFD decrease, which means that the ANN predictions are more
accurate. A total of 120 iterations were necessary to reach an
acceptable convergence, where the difference in the OF between
the CFD and ANN was 5%. Finally, additional modifications based on
the work of Billdal [27] were made to the obtained geometry to
correct cavitation problems at the leading edge that were not
Fig. 10. Convergence history of the optimization process.
L.A. Teran et al. / Renewable Energy 96 (2016) 977e992 983
equally spaced, and all camber lines together form the mean sur-
face of the blade. The other section controls the thickness of the
blade to define the suction and pressure sides. In this case, the
thickness of the blade was held constant.
The points’ position in the camber line is defined by an angle,
and the span and the blade’s length are divided into five parts,
resulting in 25 parameters to control in the optimization process,
which is highly costly to the optimizer. Thus, based on the current
actual blade’s geometry and a methodology proposed by Kostrewa
et al. [23], a function that defines the mean surface of the camber
was built. The function is defined by
z ¼ Að1 yÞ3 þ B Cx2 ð1 yÞ2 þ ð1 yÞ D Ex3 þ 16:2
(1)
Fig. 11. ANN scheme [24]. where the constant values A, B, C, D and E are the parameters to be
varied by the GA to find the optimal geometry. The variable x is
non-dimensional and represents the position of the camber line
capabilities of animal brains, among which is learning. This makes
with respect to the total span, y is the non-dimensional position
it useful in several applications, including function mappings that
along the blade length, and z represents the angular position of a
have multiple inlets and outlets. In this work, the ANN is used to
point in the blade’s mean surface defined by the camber lines (see
obtain data of an OF that are related to a geometry. To this end,
Fig. 12). Each of the constants in the function (factors) has a high
information contained in a database is required. The database is
and low value (levels of factor) in the database construction pro-
obtained from several CFD simulations of different geometries
cess. These values were selected in a trial-and-error process by
defined by several parameters. The database information is used in
varying the values in ranges that contained the major quantity of
the ANN’s training process in such a way that can predict the values
information about the design space without including odd
of the OF as an output variable from the inlet parameters of the
geometries.
geometry.
Fig. 11 shows a scheme of an ANN [24]. This network consists of
elementary process units called neurons or nodes, which are 2.3.3. Simplified CFD models
organized in interconnected layers that form a parallel structure. Given five parameters with two factor levels, many simulations
The connections between layers are created with different in- were necessary. The simulation of a full turbine takes approxi-
tensities, known as connection weights (W). In each node, a sum- mately 11 h, which is too time consuming to complete the simu-
mation of all inlet signals with a bias (b) and the signal lations required to build the database and finish the optimization
transformation obtained through a transfer function (FT), which process.
generally is defined by a sigmoidal function, is conducted. To minimize the time of the simulation, it was necessary to
The training of this network is performed to find the weight and simplify the turbine simulation. In most of the cases, the flow
bias coefficients; then, the trained ANN is used to find geometries around the runner could be considered as periodic to obtain
that remain unknown. satisfactory results; however, in this case, the shaft crosses the draft
tube, which is uncommon, and periodic supposition is not valid
2.3.2. Geometry parameterization because is necessary to consider the section of the draft tube where
The software ANSYS Bladegen allows the blade geometry to be the fluid flows around the shaft. Due to the low pressures in the
controlled using two-dimensional sections that are transformed draft tube, the shaft could be exposed to cavitation, which could
into a three-dimensional geometry. One section controls the lead to cavitation erosion and further fatigue failure. In the opti-
camber lines of the blade, defined by cubic splines, at different mization process, the cavitation (monitored as absolute pressure)
equally spaced positions along the span between the hub and in this zone was controlled because, in some simulated geometries,
shroud. The camber lines include several points, which can also be cavitation appears around the shaft.
Fig. 12. Graphical representation of the variables that define the blade’s mean surface.
984 L.A. Teran et al. / Renewable Energy 96 (2016) 977e992
Fig. 13 shows the simplified geometry used in the blade opti- measured at a point near the shaft sensitive to cavitation emer-
mization process. The domains used are composed of the guide gence, which was selected based on previous simulations; ptshaft is
vanes, the runner and a section of the draft tube. The settings of the the desired absolute pressure around the shaft (80 kPa); prunn is the
simulation are the same as those defined in the full turbine simu- absolute pressure measured on a point sensitive to cavitation
lation (Section 2.1), and the inlet and outlet boundary conditions emergence at the runner’s outlet; and ptrunn is the desired absolute
are taken from the results of the best operation point in the full pressure at the runner’s outlet (60 kPa). The constants wh, wh, wshaft,
turbine simulation. wprunn are weight factors that set the relative variable’s importance
in the optimization process and take on values of 10, 1, 5, and 5,
respectively.
2.3.4. Objective function
The OF is directly related to the requirements imposed in the
2.4. Verification simulations
design or redesign stages. In this case, the principal requirement is
to increase the efficiency. To achieve this, the optimization process
After completing the optimization process, verification simula-
is used to minimize the OF. This function includes the variables to
tions of the optimal geometry were performed. First, cavitation
be increased; however, the change in the geometries necessary to
verification was performed. To accomplish this, full turbine tran-
increase the efficiency could cause other problems that could affect
sient simulations with the Rayleigh Plesset [19] cavitation model
the overall turbine performance. For example, testing of the first
were developed at full and partial load (19.4% of the maximum
optimization showed an increase in efficiency; however, the pos-
guide vane opening). The boundary conditions, spatial discretiza-
sibility of cavitation erosion appears in some zones of the runner
tion, and turbulence model of these simulations are the same as
and the shaft. To solve this problem, penalty terms were added.
those applied in the steady simulation defined in Section 2.1. The
First, a height penalty was added to avoid exceeding the available
time discretization was performed with the implicit second-order
height. Moreover, it was necessary to add a pressure penalty in the
Backward-Euler Scheme, the convergence criteria were estab-
runner and the shaft to avoid cavitation. The axial force, which
lished as 105 RMS, the time step was defined by considering the
could be an important variable in the optimization process, was no
time required to rotate the runner 1 (1.851 104 s), and the total
longer considered in the OF because the results obtained in the first
time simulated was 0.2 s, where the monitored variables, such as
stage (Section 3.2) showed a significant variation of this variable
pressure and power, were stabilized. The results of these simula-
with the runner perforations, and tests showed that the variation
tions were used to analyze transient phenomena, such as the vortex
with the blade’s geometry was small. Section 3.3 shows how the
rope or rotor-stator interactions, in combination with Finite
axial force is addressed. The OF used is based on the work devel-
Element structural simulations to verify fatigue, resonance and
oped by Derakhshan [13] and is given by the following expression.
structural strength.
!2 !2
hreq h Ht H 2 ptshaft pshaft
3. Results and discussion
OF ¼ wh þ wh þ wshaft
hreq Ht ptshaft
2 3.1. CFD model validation
ptrunn prunn
þ wprunn
ptrunn
The first results of the full turbine simulation are helpful in
(2) validating the turbine model. The variables used to validate the
model are power and efficiency, which are defined in Eqs. (3) and
where h is the efficiency result from the simulation; hreq is the (4), respectively.
required efficiency (100%); H is the net height result; Ht is the limit
net height (35 m); pshaft is the simulated absolute pressure Pmech ¼ T u (3)
where pin is the inlet pressure, pout is the outlet pressure, hin e hout is
the height difference between the inlet and outlet, Vin is the inlet
velocity, and Vout is the outlet velocity. The pressure variables are
measured with pressure sensors installed in the turbine.
Table 2 and Fig. 14 show a comparison between the experi-
mental and numerical results at different operation points. In both
Table 2 and Fig. 14, it can be seen that the differences between the
Fig. 13. Simplified geometry used in the optimization process. numerical and experimental results are small for guide vane
L.A. Teran et al. / Renewable Energy 96 (2016) 977e992 985
Table 2
Comparison of experimental and numerical results of Francis turbine.
Guide vane opening Flow rate Actual mechanical power Simulated mechanical power Difference Actual inlet pressure Simulated inlet pressure Difference
(%) (m3/s) (kW) (kW) (%) (kPa) (kPa) (%)
openings greater than 50%. The differences in the results at low and thus material erosion. This is another problem that can be
flow rates are due to the effects of transient phenomena, which are solved with geometric modifications.
not considered in a steady-state simulation and are more relevant
outside of the BEPs. Further, it is possible that modeling errors,
discretization errors and rounding errors affected the results of the 3.2. First improvement results
simulations at those points [3].
The results lead to the conclusion that the steady-state simu- The experiment design approach to improving the turbine’s
lation provides accurate results at the point of operation of 68.57% performance described in Section 2.2 provided the first results
of the maximum guide vane opening, which is the closest to the related to geometric modifications, as shown in Figs. 5e8. Fig. 17
BEP; therefore, the optimization process was performed at that shows the principal effects of the analyzed factors concerning the
point. turbine’s efficiency. It is clear that the major effect on the efficiency
Fig. 15 shows the streamlines around the runner blades corre- is related to the runner perforations. The graph shows that, if the
sponding to the operation point closest to the BEP using two perforations are eliminated, the mean efficiency will be increased
different views. Two situations can be observed: First, there is a by 4.7%. In addition, it is noted that, by modifying the guide vanes
large recirculation zone in the blade caused by the geometry and adding a labyrinth, the efficiency can be further increased.
configuration of the blade and by the fact that its attack angle is Moreover, the modification of stay vanes leads to decreased effi-
deflected off the flow direction. Second, it is noticeable that there is ciency. This could be contradictory because a blade profile generally
excessive flow at the rear of the runner, which is due to the large behaves better than does a cylinder. However, analyzing the flow
space in the gap between the runner and the covers where the inside the turbine in Fig. 18, it can be observed that, at the inlet zone
water can flow without restriction. of the flow, the blade profile generates excessive flow recirculation,
The first problem leads to energy losses, which produce effi- which is in contrast to the situation with the cylinders; in other
ciency reductions; the second problem leads to volumetric losses, zones, the blade profiles perform well, but the efficiency decreases,
which also affect the machine’s efficiency. Based on these results, it which suggests that the problem at the inlet zone is relevant and
can be concluded that the efficiency could be improved by that the current configuration should therefore not be changed. In
addressing these two problems by applying geometric variations. addition, in further analysis, it was found that the mutual effects of
Fig. 16 shows the absolute pressure contours in the runner combining stay vanes modifications do not significantly impact
compared to the real runner. In this case, a large amount of material efficiency. It is estimated that, with the proposed modifications,
has been lost in the real runner, which, according to the simulation when there are no perforations in the runner and when there are
and the description presented in Ref. [28], is due to cavitation modified guide vanes and labyrinths with the current cylinders as
erosion. The simulation shows pressures lower than the vapor stay vanes (Section 3.2), the efficiency will increase by 6 points.
pressure in the worn zone, which means that, in these zones, the Another important response variable that should be analyzed is
emergence of cavitation bubbles occurs, causing further collapse the axial force because an excessive increase in this force can cause
the bearing to fail. Moreover, the perforations at the rear of the
Fig. 14. Power comparison between the numerical and experimental results vs. flow rate.
986 L.A. Teran et al. / Renewable Energy 96 (2016) 977e992
Fig. 15. Streamlines around the runner blades at 68.6% of the maximum guide vane opening.
runner have the function of reducing the axial thrust in the shaft. In where bN is the normalized blade distribution, b is the angle at a
Fig. 19, it is shown that, when eliminating the perforations, the axial specific point of the blade’s middle surface, b@in is the angle at the
force increases. This increase is above the design value (30 kN), blade’s leading edge, and b@out is the angle at the blade’s trailing
which means that the force should be decreased. In Section 3.3, it is edge.
demonstrated that, by changing the position of the perforations, The presented efficiency is measured in the simplified model’s
the axial thrust can be reduced without significantly affecting the geometry. During the initial tests, a high efficiency was obtained;
efficiency. It is also observed that the other factors and their com- however, during the verification process (Section 3.4), it was found
binations do not have a significant effect on the axial force. that this geometry promotes cavitation in the shaft and runner
(Fig. 28), which can lead to major problems, whereas the geome-
3.3. Effect of the modifications on the overall performance of the tries obtained following the final optimization presented less
turbine cavitation and high efficiency.
Fig. 21 shows the evolution of geometries in a cross section. It
Fig. 20 shows the evolution of the blade’s shape during the can be observed that the geometry becomes more complex with
optimization process defined by the normalized blade angle dis- the evolution of the optimization process.
tribution relative to the inlet angle defined in Eqn. (6) at span 0.5. The final runner blade’s geometry obtained through the opti-
mization process and the modifications obtained through the
b b@in experiment design process were combined to conduct a full turbine
bN ¼ (6)
b@out b@in simulation with the objective of providing a comparison with the
current turbine.
Fig. 18. Flow behavior around the stay vanes in a) Current geometry and b) Proposed geometry.
Fig. 22. Power vs. flow rate comparison of improved and current turbine. Full
simulation.
Fig. 21. Evolution of blade geometry. The efficiency was measured using the simplified model.
L.A. Teran et al. / Renewable Energy 96 (2016) 977e992 989
Fig. 23. Efficiency vs. flow rate comparison of improved and current turbine. Full
simulation.
Fig. 25. Proposed modification to reduce axial thrust.
turbine’s results. In the figure, it can be seen that the efficiency only
3.4. Verification results
marginally increases at low flow rates; however, at the BEP, where
the difference between the simulated and actual efficiency values is
After performing the optimization process, the first verification
less than 5%, the increase is greater than 6% regarding the simulated
was cavitation. Fig. 28 shows the vapor volume fraction in a first
results. In addition, at the current point of maximum power, the
geometry obtained after the initial blade optimization compared to
efficiency increases by 14.77%. This allows one to believe that,
the geometry obtained after the final optimization under similar
during real operation of the modified turbine at operation points
operating conditions. In Fig. 28a, a large zone of cavitation bubbles
near the BEP, an improvement in the performance of the turbine
in the runner and the shaft can be noted. The bubbles can cause
will be noted.
surface damage to the elements and lead to further component
Fig. 24 shows the axial force of the improved turbine, which,
failure. The most strongly affected element would be the shaft
compared to the simulated and experimental results of the current
because it is subjected to fluctuating stress, and surface damage can
turbine, is too high; the force is greater than the design value of
lead to fatigue failure. With the final blade’s geometry (Fig. 28b),
30 kN. The figure also shows the result of a proposed solution at the
cavitation is minimized, indicating that the optimization process
point near the BEP. This solution is based on recent constructions of
worked well.
this type of turbine, where, instead of having the perforations in the
Transient simulation results enabled the verification of the fa-
runner, the perforations are located in the turbine’s rear cover, and
tigue performance. The most significant result of this transient
a valve controls the flow rate through them. It is shown that this
simulation is the fluctuation of the pressure coefficient Cp (Fig. 29),
modification performs very well, reducing the axial force to below
defined as
the limits of the design. Additionally, it is verified that the efficiency
is only slightly reduced (approximately 0.1%). The proposed
modification is shown in Fig. 25. pp
Cp ¼ 1 rU
(7)
Fig. 26 shows a comparison of the streamlines around the 1
2
runner blades for the closest point to the BEP. It is clearly seen that
the recirculation of the fluid has decreased, which indicates where p is the pressure value at a point located between the guide
reduced energy losses and increased turbine efficiency. In Fig. 27, vane outlet and the runner inlet, p is the mean pressure in the
the significant change in the blade’s geometry after the optimiza- analyzed interval, r is the fluid density, and U1 is the runner’s
tion process and the final modifications can be observed. tangential velocity. It is easy to understand that the fluctuations
appear due to the rotorestator interaction. These pressure fluctu-
ations cause stress fluctuations on the runner, which can lead to
fatigue failure; the frequency of this fluctuation is 225 Hz, which is
obtained by multiplying the blade number by the rotational fre-
quency. To evaluate the risk of fatigue damage, the modified
Goodman criterion was used. The fluctuating stress was found us-
ing the results of the CFD transient simulation at the time where
there is a valley and a peak in the graph of Fig. 29. These results
were used in a structural simulation of the runner to find the Von
Mises stress, as shown in Fig. 30, where the maximum stress is
located in places sensitive to fatigue damage [29]. The difference
between the peak and valley at the point of maximum stress was
used to calculate the fatigue safety factor. The material assigned to
this component was ASTM CA6NM steel, whose fatigue properties
are described in Ref. [30]. The fatigue limit was corrected with
factors that consider the effect of the environment [31], the surface
finish and the geometry. In the end, the obtained safety factor was
Fig. 24. Axial force vs. flow rate comparison of the improved turbine, the current 4.56 if the turbine operates for more than 100 years.
turbine and the improved turbine with cover perforations. Full simulation. A similar procedure to that used for the runner was used for the
990 L.A. Teran et al. / Renewable Energy 96 (2016) 977e992
Fig. 26. Streamlines around runner blades. a) Current geometry b) Optimized geometry.
Fig. 28. Cavitation verification. a) First runner blade’s optimization result. b) Final runner blade’s geometry.
4. Conclusion
Fig. 31. Von Mises stress distribution in turbine’s covers. a) Rear cover b) Front cover.
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