多喷嘴冲击式水轮机内部流动及部件振形的研究

为了提高冲击式水轮机的出力与比转速,在设计时往往采取增加喷嘴数,但喷嘴数的增加会引起转轮内部流动的相互干涉,降低机组效率。本文采用CFD技术对多喷嘴冲击式水轮机的转轮内部流动进行数值模拟,通过水斗与喷嘴之间的相互流动计算的结果,优化出转轮水斗数,使之与喷嘴数相匹配,得到了单个水斗接受射流的全过程的速度-压力分布以及水流迹线、多个喷嘴同时作用时转轮内部流动的干涉情况。并利用ANSYS软件对水斗进行了应力分析,确定了水斗的应力分布、最高应力值点以及水轮机转轮和喷嘴的自振频率和振形图。本文的研究为大容量、多喷嘴冲击式水轮机转轮流动分析以及水斗的强度设计和喷嘴的振动研究提供了依据,同时也为电站的实际运行提供了参考。

Pressure Variation in the Fluid inside a Tesla Turbine

The recent technological developments being applied to Tesla like turbines for converting fluid energy into mechanical （axis） energy often lead to non-frequently used models. Given a disk shaped machine rotating around its own symmetry axis, part of the machine energy is transferred to the fluid itself, pushing it to the disk periphery. This way the farther the exhaust orifice is from the disk outside contour, the larger will be the pressure loss experienced by the system. This work studies the overall energy balance and momentum exchange between fluid and machine. Simple calculation shows that for total pressure gradients above two bar the machines become inefficient for having tangential velocity whose intensity is 50% higher than the intensity of the jet velocity prior to the interaction. For values of the pressure gradient above 5.7 bar, the machine peripheral velocity is equal to the incident jet velocity. In this case it is not possible to deliver power under permanent regime. Finally it is shown that when the feeding pressure of an impulse turbine is enough for more than one stage, then one should use this option to obtain thermal efficiencies similar to those of reaction machines. The jet of fluid to move a Tesla like turbine should enter the unit as close as possible to the direction tangential to the movement, （i.e., normal to the radius at the considered position）. This fluid should leave the machine right after interacting with it. Any permanence of the fluid after transferring its momentum to the machine can be extremely prejudicial to the system behavior.

A Twin Unidirectional Impulse Turbine for Wave Energy Conversion

A twin unidirectional impulse turbine has been proposed in order to enhance the performance of wave energy plant. This turbine system uses two unidirectional impulse turbines and their flow direction is different from each other. However, the turbine characteristics have not been clarified to date. The performances of a unidirectional impulse turbine under steady flow conditions were investigated experimentaUy by using a wind tunnel with large piston/cylinder in this study. Then, efficiency of the twin impulse turbine have been estimated by a quasi-steady analysis using experimental results.

OWC air chamber performance prediction under impulse turbine damping effects

Oscillating water columns(OWCs)are most widely used in coastal wave energy conversion.The air duct opens into the atmosphere through the air turbine,which is the power take-off device,and this results in a pressure drop across the air chamber.However,because of the complex configure of the impulse turbine and its high rotation speed,it is difficult to install it in the experimental simulator and numerical model.Therefore,the turbine damping effects on the operation of the OWC air chamber are induced to predict its performance more accurately.Orifice plates are used as a substitute for the impulse turbine as it generates a similar pressure drop and power output;the experimental and numerical pressure drops and output powers are compared.A 3D numerical wave tank based on the two-phase VOF model is established using the commercial CFD code Fluent,which can predict air flow and pressure variations in the chamber and duct.Water surface elevations,air flow velocity and pressure variation inside the chamber with the orifice plate are studied numerically,and validated by the corresponding experimental data.The air chamber of the Yongsoo OWC pilot plant is used as the engineering project case.The operating performance of the air chamber installed with a 0.428D orifice plate as the substitute for the designed impulse turbine is computed and analyzed.It is found that the turbine damping effects will cause around 30%reduction in the peak values of the pneumatic energy output of the OWC air chamber in the resonant wave domain.

Performance studies on an oscillating water column employing a Savonius rotor

A new oscillating water column (OWC) design is proposed in this study to incorporate a simpler Savonius type turbine. Conventional OWC devices employ a bi-directional turbine such as a Wells or an Impulse turbine to extract energy from the air. The disadvantages of the Wells turbine include its inability to self start and stalling. The Savonius turbine is much cheaper and is an effective option at low Reynolds numbers. In the current rectangular OWC device, unlike the circular OWC, the width of entry of the capture chamber can be increased without being influenced by the diameter at the turbine section. To improve its primary capture efficiency, the front and rear walls of the OWC are inclined to minimize reflection. The Savonius rotor characteristics are studied with respect to the change in frequency of the incoming waves. The rotor rpm is sensitive to wave period and primary conversion efficiency while changes in depth only affect the rotor rpm at lower frequencies. The Savonius rotor shows promising results and can be incorporated into large scale OWC devices to reduce costs of the turbine component of the system.

Pneumatic Performance of Staggered Impulse Turbine for OWC Wave Energy Convertor

A staggered impulse turbine is proposed for asymmetric air flows in Oscillating Water Column wave energy plants, which is expected to enhance the pneumatic power output in a wave cycle. The setting angle of rotor blades is set as 5°. The 3D numerical simulations were conducted under steady conditions using MRF and Mixing Plane model based on CFD software Fluent 12.0. Its mean efficiencies under different velocity amplitude ratios are studied using quasi-steady analysis, which derive corresponding data from the numerical simulation. It is found that the staggered turbine shows better performance than the conventional one under the asymmetrical air flows. Furthermore, its mean efficiency and output-work in a wave period are compared with another unsymmetrical twin impulse turbine system. The results show that the staggered turbine shows better output-work performance than the twin turbine system over the high flow coefficient domain(φ>0.7), which provides more choices to future research on turbine's optimization.

Unsteady separation of jet branch by cutout of rotating Pelton bucket

As a part of boundaries for a free curved surface of a Pelton bucket,the cutout is indispensable to secure the smooth entrance of the unsteady inflow of water jet into the rotating bucket.The cutout of the rotating bucket unsteadily separates a free jet into two branches in both space and time:the impinging branch landing on the relevant bucket surface,and the flow-off branch separated by the cutout toward the preceding bucket.In order to investigate the unsteady jet separation by the cutout three-dimensionally,a semicircular free jet was discretized into 641 nodes of boundary-fitted grids.The position P of impinging jet branch landing on the bucket surface was acquired with the relative velocity W and the water depth D at each node.The trailing edge surface of the flow-off jet branch was simultaneously computed unsteadily.The complicate unsteady interaction of the bucket cutout with the branched free jets was clarified visually with the 3D view of illustrations in order to research the unsteady hydraulic performance of Pelton turbines in space and time.