PERFORMANCE EVALUTATION OF HYDRO TURBINES BY CFD

The present work is aimed to carry out the Performance evaluation of typical medium head Francis Turbine model using Computational fluid Dynamics (CFD) Analysis. The analysis is conducted to check the hydrodynamic performance of the runner. For this purpose, Complete Francis turbine comprising spiral casing, stay vane, guide vane, runner and draft tube is modeled with the aid of CAD drawings. The model thus constituted resembles a numerical test rig for turbine performance evaluation. The next step involved is to generate a computational grid. The software used for this purpose is CFX-TURBOGRID. The solutions are obtained by proper specifications of the boundary conditions. Computational fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulation of turbine is carried out using TASC flow package and the results of analysis for 54 operating points with changing Guide vane opening, varying mass flow/turbine rpm, are compiled and optimum operating regime is identified. I have been performed the work of modeling, meshing and analysis inCorporate R & D, BHEL, Hyderabad. The results provided by the analysis are compared with experimental value. Peak efficiency for each guide vane opening is found out and highest efficiency around 94.00% is obtained.