Predicting the performance of a high head Francis turbine using a fully implicit mixing plane

In the present paper numerical investigations of a complete high head Francis turbine comprehensive of a spiral casing, stay and guide vanes and draft tube have been performed at three operating conditions, namely at part load (PL), best efficiency point (BEP), and high load (HL). The main target of the investigations is to assess the prediction accuracy of a reduced domain of the complete turbine using a novel mixing-plane formulation. The computational domain is simplified simulating one single passage of the runner, thus assuming rotational periodicity and steady state conditions. The results were compared with experimental data published by the workshop organization. All CFD simulations were performed at model scale with an in-house adapted, 3D, unstructured, object-oriented finite volume code based on the OpenFOAM-V2.2 framework and designed to solve steady-state incompressible RANS-Equations. The pressure-based solver uses a SIMPLE-C like algorithm and is capable of handling multiple references of frame (MRF). The influence of the turbulence has been considered applying the shear-stress transport model (SST). Full second order upwind scheme for advection discretization has been used for all computations.