A 3-D model of pelton turbine bucket was built to investigate the motion characteristics of sediment particles in pelton turbines and the erosion caused by the movement. With the assistance of fluid analysis software FLUENT, A continuous phase turbulence model was estimated by the Euler equation which achieved convergence and the selected coupled calculation for solid-liquid two-phase flow with DPM model was built. It can be draw from the numerical analysis that, with the same size and sediment concentration, the inner bucket wall would suffer from the greater erosion by the relatively greater flow velocity; under the same condition of flow velocity and sediment concentration, the more serious erosion was caused by the bigger sized sediments; and the greater sediment concentration led to greater erosion, given the same flow velocity and sediment size. Based on the study, it showed that the erosion of inner wall of buckets was mainly affected by sediment size and concentration, as well as flow velocity.
Field application of a multi-frequency acoustic instrument to monitor sediment for silt erosion study in Pelton turbine in Himalayan region, India
