Impulse Turbine Injector Design Improvement Using Computational Fluid Dynamics

This study utilises two modern CFD software packages (ANSYS¯ CFX¯ and ANSYS¯ Fluent¯) to analyse the basic geometric factors affecting the efficiency of a typical impulse turbine injector. A Design of Experiments study is used to look at the impact of four primary nozzle and spear design parameters on the injector losses over a range of inlet pressures. Improved injector designs for both solvers are suggested based on the results and comparisons are made. The results for both CFD tools suggest that steeper injector nozzle and spear angles than current literature describes will reduce the losses by up to 0.6%.

[1]  Pierre Leroy,et al.  Flow Analysis Inside a Pelton Turbine Bucket , 2006 .

[2]  Andrej Lipej,et al.  Numerical Prediction of Efficiency, Cavitation and Unsteady Phenomena in Water Turbines , 2008 .

[3]  Miroslav Nechleba,et al.  Hydraulic turbines : their design and equipment , 1957 .

[4]  John S. Anagnostopoulos,et al.  Optimal Design and Experimental Validation of a Turgo Model Hydro Turbine , 2012 .

[5]  John S. Anagnostopoulos,et al.  Study of the injector design in impulse hydro turbines , 2013 .

[6]  Dragica Jošt,et al.  Numerical prediction of Pelton turbine efficiency , 2010 .

[7]  François Avellan,et al.  High Speed Flow Visualisation of an Impinging Jet on a Pelton Turbine Bucket , 2007 .

[8]  Etienne Parkinson,et al.  Flow in a Pelton Turbine Bucket: Numerical and Experimental , 2006 .

[9]  Miguel Asuaje,et al.  A Preliminary Analysis of a Turgo Type Turbine CFD Simulation Designed With an Integrated Dimensional Methodology , 2012 .

[10]  Miguel Asuaje,et al.  Design Procedure for a Turgo Type Turbine Using a Three-Dimensional Potential Flow , 2012 .

[11]  Giorgio Pavesi,et al.  Numerical Analyses of Cavitating Flow in a Pelton Turbine , 2014 .

[12]  Mario Valle,et al.  Numerical Flow Analysis in a Pelton Turbine Bucket , 2004 .

[13]  K Patel,et al.  Development of Pelton turbine using numerical simulation , 2010 .

[14]  R Fiereder,et al.  Numerical and experimental investigation of the 3D free surface flow in a model Pelton turbine , 2010 .

[15]  Zh Zhang,et al.  Experimental studies of the jet of a Pelton turbine , 2007 .

[16]  George A. Aggidis,et al.  Hydro turbine prototype testing and generation of performance curves: Fully automated approach , 2014 .

[17]  Matthew Gass.  Modification Of Nozzles For The Improvement Of Efficiency Of Pelton Type Turbines , 2002 .

[18]  John S. Anagnostopoulos,et al.  SPH Method used for Flow Predictions at a Turgo Impulse Turbine: Comparison with Fluent , 2011 .