A modification method on runner blades in a Bulb turbine

Abstract

In this paper a modification method of the runner blades in a Bulb turbine is proposed, in which the main scale of the runner is maintained. In the modification method the runner blade is expressed by a gather of coordinate points. In order to make the modification simple and efficient, one of the coordinate is fixed and only the angles of the points are changed according to different modification purposes. The Bezier curve is applied to keep the modified blades smooth. For the purpose of verification, the modification method is used in some a prototype Bulb turbine in China. In order to check the modification effectiveness, a three dimensional turbulent computation is carried out through the whole passage including the bulb body, guide vanes, runner and draft tube of a prototype Bulb turbine under its rated operation. An SST k-ω turbulence model is used during the flow simulation. The performance prediction of the bulb turbine is conducted by the steady flow simulation. Comparisons of the computational results between the original turbine and a modified one indicate that the modification method is practical and can improve the performance of the bulb turbine.