International Journal of Fluid Machinery and Systems Vol. 10(2017) No. 2
(April-June)

ECHO progress was defined to depict the rotordynamic pump theory development. Experience (E) era for pumps lasted nearly one and a half hundred years before the Industrial Revolution due to the low rotation speed of motor and undeveloped manufacture ability. Classic (C) theory referring to quasi-static performance as well as the items those were not able to be steadily resolved under the level were briefly and sophisticated outlined. Since 1962, flow instabilities and the dynamic responses had come into main attention with the development of the modern technologies such as ballistic missile, rocket and space shuttle main engine, and were finally heuristically (H) elucidated by talented scholars and researchers. Recently, new applications for the pumps open (O) to the surrounding fluid and diversity of the medium such as multiphase flow need more studies and some examples were briefly introduced to display the potential problems lastly.

Although the stall stagnation phenomena have often been experienced in site and also analytically in numerical experiments in surges in systems of compressors and flow paths, the fundamental causes have not been identified yet. In order to clarify the situations, behaviours of infinitesimal disturbance waves superposed on a main flow were studied in a simplified one-dimensional flow model. A ratio of the amplifying rate of the system instability to the characteristic slope of the compressor element was surveyed as the instability enhancement factor. Numerical calculations have shown the following tendency of the factor. In the situation where both the sectional area ratio and the length ratio of the delivery flow-path to the suction duct are sufficiently large, the enhancement factors are greater in magnitude, which means occurrence of ordinary deep surges. However, in the situation where the area ratio and/or the length ratio is relatively smaller, the enhancement factor tends to lessen significantly, which situation tends to suppress deep surges for the same value of the characteristic slope. It could result in the stall stagnation condition. In the domain of area ratio vs. length ratio of the delivery duct to the suction duct, contour-lines of the enhancement factor behave qualitatively similar to those of the stall stagnation boundaries of a fan analytically obtained, suggesting that a certain range of the enhancement factor values could specify the stagnation occurrence. The significant decreases in the factors are observed to accompany appearances of phase lags and travelling waves in the wave motions, which macroscopically suggests breaking down of the complete surge actions of filling and emptying of the air in the delivery duct. The strength of the action is deeply related with acoustic interferences and is evaluated in terms of the volume-modified reduced resonance frequency proposed by the author. These observations have shown the fundamental cause and the sequence of the stall stagnation in principle.

waterjet pump and, the channel head of steam generator which is directly connect with reactor coolant pump. Generally, pumps are identical designs and are selected based on performance under uniform inflow with the straight pipe, but actually non-uniform suction flow is induced by upstream equipment. In this paper, CFD approach was employed to analyze unsteady hydrodynamic characteristics of reactor coolant pumps with different inflows. The Reynolds-averaged Naiver-Stokes equations with the k-ε turbulence model were solved by the computational fluid dynamics software CFX to conduct the steady and unsteady numerical simulation. The numerical results of the straight pipe and channel head were validated with experimental data for the heads at different flow coefficients. In the nominal flow rate, the head of the pump with the channel head decreases by 1.19% when compared to the straight pipe. The complicated structure of channel head induces the inlet flow non-uniform. The non-uniformity of the inflow induces the difference of vorticity distribution at the outlet of the pump. The variation law of blade to blade velocity at different flow rate and the difference of blade to blade velocity with different inflow are researched. The effects of non-uniform inflow on radial forces are absolutely different from the uniform inflow. For the radial forces at the frequency fR, the corresponding amplitude of channel head are higher than the straight pipe at 1.0Фd and 1.2Φd flow rates, and the corresponding amplitude of channel head are lower than the straight pipe at 0.8Φd flow rates.

Sediment flow through hydropower components causes hydro-abrasive erosion resulting in loss of efficiency, interruptions in power production and downtime for repair/maintenance. Online instruments are required to measure/capture the variations in sediment parameters along with collecting samples manually to analyse in laboratory for verification. In this paper, various sediment parameters viz. size, concentration (TSS), shape and mineral composition relevant to hydro-abrasive erosion were measured and discussed with respect to a hydropower plant in Himalayan region, India. A multi-frequency acoustic instrument was installed at a desilting chamber to continuously monitor particle size distribution (PSD) and TSS entering the turbine during 27 May to 6 August 2015. The sediment parameters viz. TSS, size distribution, mineral composition and shape entering the turbine were also measured and analysed, using manual samples collected twice daily from hydropower plant, in laboratory with instruments based on laser diffraction, dynamic digital image processing, gravimetric method, conductivity, scanning electron microscope, X-ray diffraction and turbidity. The acoustic instrument was able to capture the variation in TSS; however, significant deviations were found between measured mean sediment sizes compared to values found in the laboratory. A good relation was found for turbidity (R2 = 0.86) and laser diffraction (R2 = 0.93) with TSS, which indicated that turbidimeter and laser diffraction instrument can be used for continuous monitoring of TSS at the plant. Total sediment load passed through penstock during study period was estimated to be 15,500 ton. This study shall be useful for researchers and hydropower managers in measuring/monitoring sediment for hydro-abrasive erosion study in hydropower plants.

Performance characteristics in pump mode of pump-turbines are vital for the safe and effective operation of pumped storage power plants. However, the head characteristics are different under different guide vane openings. In this paper, 3-D steady simulations were performed under 13mm, 19mm and 25mm guide vane openings. Three groups of operating points under the three GVOs were chosen based on experimental validation to investigate the influence of guide vane setting on flow patterns upstream and downstream. The results reveal that, the guide vane setting will obviously change the flow pattern downstream, which in turn influences the flow upstream. It shows a strong effect on hydraulic loss (power dissipation) in the guide and stay vanes. It is also found that the hydraulic loss mainly comes from the flow separation and vortices. In addition, in some operating conditions, the change of guide vane opening will change the flow angle at the runner inlet and outlet, which will change the Euler momentum (power input). The joint action of Euler momentum and hydraulic loss results in the change of the head characteristics.

Francis turbines are often operated over a wide load range due to high flexibility in electricity demand and penetration of other renewable energies. This has raised significant concerns about the existing designing criteria. Hydraulic turbines are not designed to withstand large dynamic pressure loadings on the stationary and rotating parts during such conditions. Previous investigations on transient operating conditions of turbine were mainly focused on the pressure fluctuations due to the rotor-stator interaction. This study characterizes the synchronous and asynchronous pressure and velocity fluctuations due to rotor-stator interaction and rotating vortex rope during load variation, i.e. best efficiency point to part load and vice versa. The measurements were performed on the Francis-99 test case. The repeatability of the measurements was estimated by providing similar movement to guide vanes twenty times for both load rejection and load acceptance operations. Synchronized two dimensional particle image velocimetry and pressure measurements were performed to investigate the dominant frequencies of fluctuations, vortex rope formation, and modes (rotating and plunging) of the rotating vortex rope. The time of appearance and disappearance of rotating and plunging modes of vortex rope was investigated simultaneously in the pressure and velocity data. The asynchronous mode was observed to dominate over the synchronous mode in both velocity and pressure measurements.

The nozzle-flapper valves are widely applied as a pilot stage in aerospace and military system. A subject of the analysis presented in this work is to find out a reasonable range of null clearance between the nozzle and flapper. This paper has presented a numerical flow coefficient simulation. In every design point, a parameterized model is created for flow coefficient simulation and cavitation under different conditions with varying gap width and inlet pressure. Moreover, a new test device has been designed to measure the flow coefficient and for visualized cavitation. The numerical simulation and test results both indicate that cavitation intensity gets fierce initially and shrinks finally as the gap width varies from small to large. From the curve, the flow coefficient mostly has experienced three stages: linear throttle section, transition section and saturation section. The appropriate deflection of flapper is recommended to make the gap width drop into the linear throttle section. The flapper-nozzle null clearance is optionally recommended near the range of DN/16. Finally through simulation it is also concluded that the inlet pressure plays a little role in the influence on the flow coefficient.