Detection of Unsteady Flow in a Kaplan Hydraulic Turbine Using Machine Mechanical Model and Rotor Measured Vibrations

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paolo Pennacchi ◽  
Andrea Vania ◽  
Steven Chatterton ◽  
Ezio Tanzi
Keyword(s):  
Unsteady Flow ◽  
Flow Rate ◽  
Mechanical Model ◽  
Turbine Unit ◽  
Draft Tube ◽  
Hydraulic Turbine ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
Design Stage ◽  
System Response ◽  
Model Based

Hydraulic stability is one of the key problems during the design stage of hydraulic turbines. Despite of modern computational tools that help to define dangerous operating conditions and optimize runner design, hydraulic instabilities may fortuitously arise during the turbine life, as a consequence of variable and different operating conditions at which a hydraulic turbine can be subject. In general, the presence of unsteady flow reveals itself in two different ways: at small flow rate, the swirling flow in the draft tube conical inlet occupies a large portion of the inlet and causes a strong helical vortex rope; at large flow rate conditions the unsteady flow starts midway and causes a breakdownlike vortex bubble, followed by weak helical waves. In any case, hydraulic instability causes mechanical effects on the runner, on the whole turbine and on the draft tube, which may eventually produce severe damages on the turbine unit and whose most evident symptoms are vibrations. This notwithstanding, condition monitoring systems seldom are installed on this purpose in hydraulic power plants and no examples are reported in literature about the use of model-based methods to detect hydraulic instability onset. In this paper, by taking the advantage of a testing campaign performed during the commissioning of a 23 MW Kaplan hydraulic turbine unit, a rotordynamic model-based method is proposed. The turbine was equipped by proximity and vibration velocity probes, that allowed measuring lateral and axial vibrations of the shaft-line, under many different operating conditions, including also some off-design ones. The turbine mechanical model, realized by means of finite beam elements and considering lateral and axial degrees of freedom, is used to predict turbine unit response to the unsteady flow. Mechanical system response is then compared to the measured one and the possibility to detect instability onset, especially in real-time, is discussed.

scholarly journals The Influence of Transient Regimes on Unsteady Vortex Phenomena in the Model of the Draft Tube of the Hydraulic Turbine

2019 ◽  
Vol 14 (4) ◽  
pp. 55-68
Author(s):  
D. A. Suslov ◽  
I. V. Litvinov ◽  
S. I. Shtork ◽  
E. U. Gorelikov
Keyword(s):  
Flow Rate ◽  
Swirling Flow ◽  
Draft Tube ◽  
Maximum Level ◽  
Hydraulic Turbine ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
Rotor Speed ◽  
Precessing Vortex Core ◽  
Transient Regimes ◽  
Partial Load

This article is devoted to study the swirling flow with the formation of the precessing vortex core (PVC) in the cone of the model of the draft tube of the hydraulic turbine. The experiments were carried out on the aerodynamic set-up both in stationary and in transient regimes of operation of the hydraulic turbine. The hydraulic turbine operating conditions were varied by continuously changing the flow rate at a constant rotor speed. The formation of the PVC in the flow and the maximum level of pressure pulsations in the regime modeling the partial load regime of a turbine are revealed. The boundaries of the occurrence of the PVC effect are determined with varying rotor speed and air flow rate. It was found that the dependence of the PVC lifetime in transition regimes correlate with the transition time. It was shown that the velocity profiles in transient conditions change quasistatically between the operation regime with partial loading of the turbine and the regime of the highest efficiency of the turbine.

Hydraulic Instability Onset Detection in Kaplan Turbines by Monitoring Shaft Vibrations

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
P. Pennacchi ◽  
P. Borghesani ◽  
S. Chatterton ◽  
A. Vania
Keyword(s):  
Experimental Test ◽  
Turbine Unit ◽  
Swirling Flow ◽  
Draft Tube ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
Low Flow ◽  
Operating Life ◽  
Vortex Rope ◽  
Power Load ◽  
Helical Vortex

Design of hydraulic turbines has often to deal with hydraulic instability. It is well-known that Francis and Kaplan types present hydraulic instability in their design power range. Even if modern CFD tools may help to define these dangerous operating conditions and optimize runner design, hydraulic instabilities may fortuitously arise during the turbine life and should be timely detected in order to assure a long-lasting operating life. In a previous paper, the authors have considered the phenomenon of helical vortex rope, which happens at low flow rates when a swirling flow, in the draft tube conical inlet, occupies a large portion of the inlet. In this condition, a strong helical vortex rope appears. The vortex rope causes mechanical effects on the runner, on the whole turbine and on the draft tube, which may eventually produce severe damages on the turbine unit and whose most evident symptoms are vibrations. The authors have already shown that vibration analysis is suitable for detecting vortex rope onset, thanks to an experimental test campaign performed during the commissioning of a 23 MW Kaplan hydraulic turbine unit. In this paper, the authors propose a sophisticated data driven approach to detect vortex rope onset at different power load, based on the analysis of the vibration signals in the order domain and introducing the so-called “residual order spectrogram”, i.e. an order-rotation representation of the vibration signal. Some experimental test runs are presented and the possibility to detect instability onset, especially in real-time, is discussed.

scholarly journals Manipulation of the swirling flow instability in hydraulic turbine diffuser by different methods of water injection

2018 ◽  
Vol 180 ◽  
pp. 02090 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavel Rudolf ◽  
Jiří Litera ◽  
Germán Alejandro Ibarra Bolanos ◽  
David Štefan
Keyword(s):  
Swirling Flow ◽  
Flow Instability ◽  
Draft Tube ◽  
Water Injection ◽  
Hydraulic Turbine ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
Francis Turbine ◽  
Necessary Condition ◽  
Vortex Rope ◽  
Wide Range

Vortex rope, which induces substantial pressure pulsations, arises in the draft tube (diffuser) of Francis turbine for off-design operating conditions. Present paper focuses on mitigation of those pulsations using active water jet injection control. Several modifications of the original Susan-Resiga’s idea were proposed. All modifications are driven by manipulation of the shear layer region, which is believed to play important role in swirling flow instability. While some of the methods provide results close to the original one, none of them works in such a wide range. Series of numerical experiments support the idea that the necessary condition for vortex rope pulsation mitigation is increasing the fluid momentum along the draft tube axis.

Velocity Measurements Downstream of the Impellers in a Multistage Centrifugal Blower

1994 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. L. Amulfi ◽  
D. Micheli ◽  
P. Pinamonti
Keyword(s):  
Flow Field ◽  
Unsteady Flow ◽  
Flow Rate ◽  
Rotating Stall ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
Field Analysis ◽  
Test Plant ◽  
Hot Wire ◽  
Centrifugal Blower ◽  
Ensemble Averaging

The paper presents the results of an experimental investigation on a four-stage centrifugal blower, having the aim of obtaining an accurate description of the flow field behind the impellers in several operative conditions and for different geometrical configurations. Actually, the test plant allows to change the turbomachinery characteristics assembling one, two, three or four stages and three different types of diffusers. In this first research step, the blower has been tested in the four-stage vaneless diffuser configuration. The unsteady flow field behind the impellers and in the diffusers has been measured by means of a hot-wire anemometer. A Phase Locked Ensemble Averaging Technique has been utilised to obtain the relative flow field from the instantaneous signals of the stationary hot-wire probes. Several detailed measurements sets have been performed using both single and crossed hot-wire probe, to obtain the velocity vectors and turbulence trends, just behind the blower impellers and in several radial positions of the vaneless diffusers. These measurements have been done at different flow rate conditions, covering unsteady flow rate phenomena (rotating stall) too. The results obtained allowed to get a detailed flow field analysis in the multistage centrifugal blower, in relation to the geometrical configuration and to the differing operating conditions.

scholarly journals On the Evaluation of Mesh Resolution for Large-Eddy Simulation of Internal Flows Using Openfoam

Fluids ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (1) ◽  
pp. 24
Author(s):  
Zahra Seifollahi Moghadam ◽  
François Guibault ◽  
André Garon
Keyword(s):  
Draft Tube ◽  
Hydraulic Turbine ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
Sudden Expansion ◽  
Test Cases ◽  
Eddy Simulation ◽  
Large Eddy ◽  
Mesh Resolution ◽  
Hydraulic Turbines ◽  
Academic Test

The central aim of this paper is to use OpenFOAM for the assessment of mesh resolution requirements for large-eddy simulation (LES) of flows similar to the ones which occur inside the draft-tube of hydraulic turbines at off-design operating conditions. The importance of this study is related to the fact that hydraulic turbines often need to be operated over an extended range of operating conditions, which makes the investigation of fluctuating stresses crucial. Scale-resolving simulation (SRS) approaches, such as LES and detached-eddy simulation (DES), have received more interests in the recent decade for understanding and mitigating unsteady operational behavior of hydro turbines. This interest is due to their ability to resolve a larger part of turbulent flows. However, verification studies in LES are very challenging, since errors in numerical discretization, but also subgrid-scale (SGS) models, are both influenced by grid resolution. A comprehensive examination of the literature shows that SRS for different operating conditions of hydraulic turbines is still quite limited and that there is no consensus on mesh resolution requirement for SRS studies. Therefore, the goal of this research is to develop a reliable framework for the validation and verification of SRS, especially LES, so that it can be applied for the investigation of flow phenomena inside hydraulic turbine draft-tube and runner at their off-design operating conditions. Two academic test cases are considered in this research, a turbulent channel flow and a case of sudden expansion. The sudden expansion test case resembles the flow inside the draft-tube of hydraulic turbines at part load. In this study, we concentrate on these academic test cases, but it is expected that hydraulic turbine flow simulations will eventually benefit from the results of the current research. The results show that two-point autocorrelation is more sensitive to mesh resolution than energy spectra. In addition, for the case of sudden expansion, the mesh resolution has a tremendous effect on the results, and, so far, we have not capture an asymptotic converging behavior in the results of Root Mean Square (RMS) of velocity fluctuations and two-point autocorrelation. This case, which represents complex flow behavior, needs further mesh resolution studies.

scholarly journals Numerical Study on Performance Characteristics of Draft Tube of Mixed Flow Hydraulic Turbine

2012 ◽  
Vol 10 ◽  
pp. 48-52
Author(s):  
Ruchi Khare ◽  
Vishnu Prasad
Keyword(s):  
Coming Out ◽  
Draft Tube ◽  
Numerical Study ◽  
Flow Simulation ◽  
Hydraulic Turbine ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
Francis Turbine ◽  
Mixed Flow ◽  
Computational Fluid Dynamics Cfd ◽  
Overall Performance

Draft tube is an important component of the hydraulic reaction turbine and affects the overall performance of turbine to a large extent. The flow inside the draft tube is complex because of the whirling flow coming out of runner and its diffusion along the draft tube. The kinetic energy coming out of runner is recovered in draft tube and part of recovery meets the losses. In the present work, the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been used for flow simulation in complete mixed flow Francis turbine for performance analysis for energy recovery, losses and flow pattern in an elbow draft tube used in Francis turbine at different operating conditions. The overall performance of the turbine at some typical operating regimes is validated with the experimental results and found to be in close comparison.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3126/hn.v10i0.7103 Hydro Nepal Vol.10 January 2012 48-52

Velocity Measurements Downstream of the Impellers in a Multistage Centrifugal Blower

1995 ◽  
Vol 117 (4) ◽  
pp. 593-601 ◽  
Author(s):  
G. L. Arnulfi ◽  
D. Micheli ◽  
P. Pinamonti
Keyword(s):  
Flow Field ◽  
Unsteady Flow ◽  
Flow Rate ◽  
Rotating Stall ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
Field Analysis ◽  
Test Plant ◽  
Hot Wire ◽  
Centrifugal Blower ◽  
Detailed Measurement

The paper presents the results of an experimental investigation on a four-stage centrifugal blower, having the aim of obtaining an accurate description of the flow field behind the impellers in several operative conditions and for different geometric configurations. Actually, the test plant allows one to change the turbomachinery characteristics assembling one, two, three, or four stages and three different types of diffuser. In this first research step, the blower has been tested in the four-stage vaneless diffuser configuration. The unsteady flow field behind the impellers and in the diffusers has been measured by means of a hot-wire anemometer. A phase-locked ensemble-averaging technique has been utilized to obtain the relative flow field from the instantaneous signals of the stationary hot-wire probes. Several detailed measurement sets have been performed using both single and crossed hot-wire probes, to obtain the velocity vectors and turbulence trends, just behind the blower impellers and in several radial positions of the vaneless diffusers. These measurements have been done at different flow rate conditions, covering unsteady flow rate phenomena (rotating stall) also. The results obtained allowed us to get a detailed flow field analysis in the multistage centrifugal blower, in relation to the geometric configuration and to the differing operating conditions.

Measurement of the Flow in a 170 MW Hydraulic Turbine Recording the Pressure-Time Rise in One Section of the Penstock

2006 ◽  
Author(s):  
F. Sierra ◽  
J. Kubiak ◽  
G. Urquiza ◽  
A. Adamkoski ◽  
W. Janicki ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Flow Rate ◽  
Flow Simulation ◽  
Hydraulic Turbine ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
Measuring System ◽  
Recirculation Region ◽  
Flow Recirculation ◽  
Pressure Time ◽  
On Line ◽  
Region Size

The objective of the present work is to evaluate the performance of a hydraulic turbine by means of the measurement of flow using the Gibson method based on recording pressure–time rise in one section of the penstock and relate it to the pressure in the upper reservoir to which the penstock is connected. Volumetric flow is determined by integration of the time function of a differential pressure (between the section and the inlet to the penstock). Flow measurement was possible this way because the influence of penstock inlet was negligible as far as an error of the measurement is concerned. The paper presents the results obtained with this method for the case of a 170 MW hydraulic turbine. The length of the penstock was 300 m. Previous experience and a standard IEC-41-1991 were the criteria adopted and applied. An efficient and fast acquisition system including a 16 bit card was used. The flow rate was calculated using a computer program developed and tested on several cases. The results obtained with the Gibson method were used for calibration of the on-line flow measuring system based on the Winter-Kennedy principles. This last method is used for continuous monitoring of the turbine flow rate. Having calculated the flow rate and output power the efficiency is calculated for any operating conditions. A curve showing the best operating conditions based on the highest efficiency is presented and discussed. Flow simulation allowed having an estimation of a flow recirculation region size.

scholarly journals Experimental and Numerical Simulations Predictions Comparison of Power and Efficiency in Hydraulic Turbine

2011 ◽  
Vol 2011 ◽  
pp. 1-8 ◽  
Author(s):  
Laura Castro ◽  
Gustavo Urquiza ◽  
Adam Adamkowski ◽  
Marcelo Reggio
Keyword(s):  
Mass Flow Rate ◽  
Mass Flow ◽  
Flow Rate ◽  
Draft Tube ◽  
Flow Simulation ◽  
Numerical Data ◽  
Hydroelectric Power Plant ◽  
Hydraulic Turbine ◽  
Hydroelectric Power ◽  
Spiral Case

On-site power and mass flow rate measurements were conducted in a hydroelectric power plant (Mexico). Mass flow rate was obtained using Gibson's water hammer-based method. A numerical counterpart was carried out by using the commercial CFD software, and flow simulations were performed to principal components of a hydraulic turbine: runner and draft tube. Inlet boundary conditions for the runner were obtained from a previous simulation conducted in the spiral case. The computed results at the runner's outlet were used to conduct the subsequent draft tube simulation. The numerical results from the runner's flow simulation provided data to compute the torque and the turbine's power. Power-versus-efficiency curves were built, and very good agreement was found between experimental and numerical data.

scholarly journals Application of a Model-Based Controller for Improving Internal Combustion Engines Fuel Economy

Energies ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 13 (5) ◽  
pp. 1148 ◽  
Author(s):  
Teresa Castiglione ◽  
Pietropaolo Morrone ◽  
Luigi Falbo ◽  
Diego Perrone ◽  
Sergio Bova
Keyword(s):  
Flow Rate ◽  
Internal Combustion Engines ◽  
Cooling System ◽  
Combustion Engine ◽  
Internal Combustion ◽  
Operating Conditions ◽  
Coolant Flow ◽  
Coolant Flow Rate ◽  
Engine Operation ◽  
Model Based

Improvements in internal combustion engine efficiency can be achieved with proper thermal management. In this work, a simulation tool for the preliminary analysis of the engine cooling control is developed and a model-based controller, which enforces the coolant flow rate by means of an electrically driven pump is presented. The controller optimizes the coolant flow rate under each engine operating condition to guarantee that the engine temperatures and the coolant boiling levels are kept inside prescribed constraints, which guarantees efficient and safe engine operation. The methodology is validated at the experimental test rig. Several control strategies are analyzed during a standard homologation cycle and a comparison of the proposed methodology and the adoption of the standard belt-driven pump is provided. The results show that, according to the control strategy requirements, a fuel consumption reduction of up to about 8% with respect to the traditional cooling system can be achieved over a whole driving cycle. This proves that the proposed methodology is a useful tool for appropriately cooling the engine under the whole range of possible operating conditions.

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