Exploration of the mechanism of cavitation vortex rope and vortex development in the draft tube of tubular turbine units

Draft tube vortex rope is considered a special cavitation flow phenomenon in tubular turbine units.Cavitation vortex rope is one of the most detrimental factors affecting the safety of hydraulic turbines.In this study,ANSYS CFX software was utilized to numerically simulate the internal cavitation flow of a hydraulic turbine draft tube.The evolution of the cavitation vortex core was characterized by vortex line distribution and vorticity transport equation.The shape and number of blades influenced the revolving direction and distribution characteristics of the vortex close to the runner cone,which formed a counterclockwise-clockwise-counterclockwise distribution pattern.Simultaneously,there were many secondary flows in the draft tube.Mutual cancellation and dissipation between the flows was one of the reasons for reduction in vorticity.When the cross-sectional shape of the draft tube was changed,the vorticity was distributed from the center of the vortex rope to all parts of the cross-sectional draft tube,with extreme values at the center and at the walls.The vortex stretching and dilatation terms played a major role in the change in vorticity,with the baroclinic torque having an effect at the center of the vortex rope,this study is helpful to understand the flow of water in the draft tube and guide the design and optimization of the draft tube in engineering application.

Lattice Boltzmann simulation of flows in bifurcate channel at rotating inflow boundary conditions and resulted different outflow fluxes

The Lattice Boltzmann method （LBM） is used to simulate the flow field in a bifurcate channel which is a simplified model of the draft tube of hydraulic turbine machine. According to the simulation results, some qualitative conclusions can be deduced. The reason of uneven flux in different branches of draft tube is given. Not only the vortex rope itself, but also the attenuation of the rotation strength is important in bringing on the uneven flux. The later leads to adverse pressure gradient, and changes the velocity profile. If the outlet contains more than one exit, the one that contains the vortex rope will lose flux because of this adverse pressure gradient. Several possible methods can be used to minimize the adverse pressure gradient domain in order to improve the efficiency of turbine machine.

Prediction of the precessing vortex core in the Francis-99 draft tube under off-design conditions by using Liutex/Rortex method

The turbulent flow in the draft tube of a Francis turbine is very complicated while working under off-design conditions. Although the off-design conditions were widely studied, the vortex core line in the draft tube of a Francis turbine with splitter blades is not well understood, especially the vortex rope property. This letter presents a prediction of the behavior of the vortex rope in the draft tube of the Francis-99 turbine obtained by the computational fluid dynamics (CFD), where the Liutex/Rortex method, as the most recent vortex definition, is applied to analyze the periodical precession of the vortex rope in the draft tube cone. The advantage of this Liutex/Rortex method is shown by its enhanced ability to represent the vortex rope structurewith the vortex-core lines. Furthermore, since it seems to be very hard to define a sharp boundary surface for the whole vortex structure, it is advantageousfocusing only on the vortex core line,by which different vortex structures can be clearly differentiated. The evolution of the vortex core and the process of the vortex breakdown in the draft tube are revealed, which might help to comprehend the development of the turbulent flow in the draft tube.

Suppression of vortex rope oscillation and pressure vibrations in Francis turbine draft tube using various strategies

The vortex rope usually occurs in the draft tube of the Francis turbine operated under part-load conditions,to induce strong low-frequency pressure vibrations,and therefore,is very harmful to the safety of the hydropower unit.In the present work,three kinds of strategies are extensively investigated,i.e.,the installations of the ventilation and the fin,as well as the hybrid strategy of the air admission through a fin,so as to effectively suppress the vortex rope oscillation and the pressure vibration in the draft tube of a Francis turbine,whose specific speed is 125 m-kW.For the unsteady flow simulation,the Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes(RANS)method is applied coupled with the k-ω SST turbulence model and a homogeneous cavitation model.The flow analysis confirms that the low-frequency pressure vibrations are originated from the periodical oscillation of the vortex rope,and the cavitation usually enhances the vortex rope oscillation in the draft tube.Under the part-load condition,the dominant component of the pressure vibration in the draft tube has a frequency,for example,f_(1),lower than the runner rotating frequency f_(n).It is shown that all three strategies can be adopted to alleviate the vortex rope oscillation and the pressure vibrations in the draft tube,but their suppression mechanisms are quite different.The ventilation of an adequate amount from the turbine runner cone can change the vortex rope geometry from the spiral type to the cylindrical type,suppress the vortex rope oscillation,and consequently create the homogeneous distributions of the pressure and the pressure gradient in the draft tube.On the other hand,a fin installed at the draft tube wall can induce a small extra rope,and the interaction between the main vortex rope and the extra rope changes the flow field and alleviates the pressure vibration in the draft tube.It should be noted that a fin is much more effective to suppress the pressure vibration in the draft tube under the cavitation condition than under the non-cavitation condition.A better effect of suppressing the vortex rope oscillation can be achieved by the air admission through a fin,which is studied numerically in this paper.The result indicates that the air admission can further improve the effect of a fin for suppressing the pressure vibration in the inlet cone of the draft tube.This improvement is due to the stronger interaction between the main vortex rope and the extra air rope.However,the air admission through a fin should be carefully treated because the strong interaction may induce a larger pressure vibration in the elbow of the draft tube.Finally,it is clear that any strategy for suppressing the pressure vibration hardly changes the dominant component frequency f_(1),which is in the range of 0.22 f_(n)-0.23 f_(n) due to the main vortex rope oscillation in this study.The current results may be used in various engineering applications,where the active control of the vortex oscillation and the pressure vibrations with or without the cavitation is necessary.

Runner cone optimization to reduce vortex rope-induced pressure fluctuations in a Francis turbine

Pressure fluctuations induced by a vortex rope are the major causes of hydraulic turbine vibration in partial load operating conditions. Hence, an effective control strategy should be adopted to improve rotating characteristics of the vortex rope and reduce the corresponding pressure fluctuation. In this study, two new types of runner cones(i.e., abnormally shaped and long straight cones) were proposed to optimize the pressure distribution in the draft tube, and unsteady numerical simulations were performed to determine their mechanism of action. Numerical results were validated using flow observation and pressure fluctuation experiments. Detailed analyses were conducted to understand the effects of the helical vortex rope operating conditions. The results indicated that pressure fluctuations in the draft tube at partial load operation result primarily from low frequency fluctuations induced by the rotation of the helical vortex rope, whose amplitudes are related to the rotating radius of the helical vortex rope. Both runner cone types could effectively reduce the pressure-fluctuation amplitude. The long straight type could reduce the amplitude of low-frequency fluctuation induced by vortex rope to a maximum of 74.08% and the abnormalshape type to 38.31%. Thus, the effective optimization of the runner cone can potentially reduce pressure-fluctuation amplitudes.Our research findings were applied to a real hydraulic plant in China.

Three-Dimensional Simulation of Unsteady Flow in a Model Francis Hydraulic Turbine

For Francis hydraulic turbines, unsteady flow caused by vortex ropes in the draft tube leads to a problem of stability in operation. The unsteady flow field of a model Francis hydraulic turbine was simulated under part-load operation. A sliding mesh model was used to calculate a time-accurate solution for the strong rotor-stator interactions between the runner and guide vanes, and the draft tube. Based on three-dimensional incompressible Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equations and on a renormalization group k-?turbulence model, spatial discretization was obtained by using the finite volume method with unstructured grid elements, and a second order fully implicit scheme was applied for time. Pressure fluctuations in the draft tube were recorded and analyzed via a fast Fourier transform calculation. The results were compared with the experimental data, and show that the vortex rope in the draft tube and the induced pressure fluctuations are well simulated.

An axisymmetric model for draft tube flow at partial load

A new Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes （RANS） turbulence model is developed in order to correctly predict the mean flow field in a draft tube operating under partial load using 2-D axisymmetric simulations. It is shown that although 2-D axisymmetric simulations cannot model the 3-D unsteady features of the vortex rope, they can give the average location of the vortex rope in the draft tube. Nevertheless, RANS simulations underpredict the turbulent kinetic energy （TKE） production and diffusion near the center of the draft tube where the vortex rope forms, resulting in incorrect calculation of TKE profiles and, hence, poor prediction of the axial velocity. Based on this observation, a new k- c turbulence RANS model taking into account the extra production and diffusion of TKE due to coherent structures associated with the vortex rope formation is developed. The new model can successfully predict the mean flow velocity with significant improvements in comparison with the realizable k - c model. This is attributed to better prediction of TKE production and diffusion by the new model in the draft tube under partial load. Specifically, the new model calculates 31% more production and 46% more diffusion right at the shear layer when compared to the k - ~ model.

Influence of upstream disturbance on the draft-tube flow of Francis turbine under part-load conditions

Owing to the part-load operations for the enhancement of grid flexibility, the Francis turbine often suffers from severe low-frequency and large-amplitude hydraulic instability, which is mostly pertinent to the highly unsteady swirling vortex rope in the draft tube. The influence of disturbances in the upstream（e.g., large-scale vortex structures in the spiral casing） on the draft-tube vortex flow is not well understood yet. In the present paper, the influence of the upstream disturbances on the vortical flow in the draft tube is studied based on the vortex identification method and the analysis of several important parameters（e.g., the swirl number and the velocity profile）. For a small guide vane opening（representing the part-load condition）, the vortices triggered in the spiral casing propagate downstream and significantly affect the swirling vortex-rope precession in the draft tube, leading to the changes of the intensity and the processional frequency of the swirling vortex rope. When the guide vane opening approaches the optimum one（representing the full-load condition）, the upstream disturbance becomes weaker and thus its influences on the downstream flow are very limited.