Hydraulic Design of Water Turbine Based on the Computational Fluid Dynamics

In the field of hydraulic turbine Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is routinely used today in research and development as well as in design. The Navier-Stokes steady flow analysis has been applied to successfully predicted flow characteristics and energy losses in different hydraulic turbine components. It has been used to design and optimize hydraulic turbine components. With the increasing of unit power and size, a special attention has paid to the hydraulic turbine stability. In order to get solutions to the stability problem an unsteady flow analysis is necessary. In this paper, the three-dimensional viscous steady/unsteady flow is simulated through the whole flow passage of the model Francis turbine. The efficiency hill chart of the entire turbine is predicted; the rotor-stator coupling by application of sliding mesh is shown, and computational results are analyzed for part load point of operation.