Petley, Sean and Zidonis, Audrius and Panagiotopoulos, Alexandros and Benzon, Shaun and Aggidis, George Athanasios and Anagnostopoulos, Ioannis and Papantonis, Dimitris (2019) Out with the old, in with the new : Pelton hydro turbine performance influence utilising three different injector geometries. Journal of Fluids Engineering, 141 (8): 081103. ISSN 0098-2202
Full text not available from this repository.Abstract
In previous works the authors presented CFD results, which showed that injectors with noticeably steeper nozzle and spear angles 110° & 70° and 150° & 90° respectively, attain higher efficiency than the industry standard 80° & 55°. Moreover, experimental testing of the entire Pelton system showed that gains of about 1% in efficiency can be achieved, however there appears to be an upper limit beyond which steeper designs are no longer optimal. This study aims at providing further insight by presenting additional CFD analysis of the runner, which has been coupled with the jet profile from the aforementioned injectors. The results are compared by examining the impact the jet shape has on the runner torque profile during the bucket cycle and the influence this has on turbine efficiency. It can be concluded that the secondary velocities, which contribute to the development of more significant free-surface degradations as the spear and nozzle angles are increased result in a non-optimal jet runner interaction.