2020 年 86 巻 887 号 p. 20-00132
The present paper describes the performance of a micro undershot water wheel for the power generation in a snow drainageway with the Froude number of 2 to 3. In order to optimize the installation conditions of the undershot water wheel and its arc blade, the effects of blade inlet angle β and the submerged blade height hc on the performance of the undershot micro water wheel has been investigated by field test at Shiramine district in Ishikawa Prefecture. Furthermore, two-dimensional computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has been performed using ANSYS Fluent to be shown clearly the flow of inside and outside of the undershot water wheel and its power. The water wheel has a diameter of D = 600 mm and a width of W = 410 mm. In the snow drainageway, the Froude number is Fr = 2.15 to 2.42. The CFD result of the change of the maximum power coefficient CPmax with the blade inlet angle of β agrees with the experimental one qualitatively. In the case of the submerged blade height hc/D = 0.10, the blade inlet angle β has little influence on the power coefficient CP. In the case of hc/D = 0.20 and 0.29, the peak value of the maximum power coefficient is CPmax = 0.37 and 0.27 at β = 18° and 24°, respectively. The relation between the flow in the water wheel and the generation of torque has been clarified by CFD. The negative torque generates at the rotation angle of water wheel θ = 0 ~ 40° because the separated flow from the tip of blade collides against the back of the blade. The positive torque generates at θ = 45 ~ 110° to apply the drag force by the main flow. The positive torque also generates by the water flow passing through the blades for θ = 135 ~ 210°.
