Pressure fluctuation at the vaneless space and vanes passages is one of the most important problems for the stable operation of a pump turbine. The fluctuation appears in any operating condition. Much research has been done on the pressure fluctuation of hydraulic machinery. However, the details of pressure fluctuation propagation of the pump turbine at the pump mode have not been revealed. The modem pump turbine with high water head requires the runner to be ＂flat＂, which would induce pressure fluctuation more easily than the low head pump turbine. In this article, a high head pump turbine model is used as the re- search object. As the pressure fluctuation at off-design point is more serious than at the design point, the low head condition is chosen as the research condition. Pressure fluctuation at the vaneless space and vanes passages is predicted by the computa- tional fluid dynamics method based on k-co shear stress transport model. The experiment conducted on the test rig of the Har- bin Institute of Large Electrical Machinery is used to verify the simulation method. It proves that the numerical method is a feasible way to research the fluctuation under this operating condition. The pressure fluctuation along the passage direction is analyzed at time and frequency domains. It is affected mainly by the interaction between the runner and vanes. In the circumferential direction, the influence of the special stay vane on the pressure fluctuation is got. The amplitude in the high-pressure side passage of that vane is lower than that in the other side. The study provides a basic understanding of the pressure fluctua- tion of a pump turbine and could be used as a reference to improve the operation stability of it.
Transient operations are commonly founded in fluid machineries such as the starting, stopping, and variations of rotor speeds, etc. Flow generated from a started fiat plate is of fundamental importance. Experiments have been done to observe the flow evolution in current researches. And in order to explore the flow in more detailed scale, some vortex methods with high resolution and other numerical methods were developed to solve various related problems by some researchers. But the promotion of vortex method to engineering application is rare due to its complexity and difficulty in specifying the boundary conditions. In order to build up a method of numerical study for such problems, a simplified model is built up with a flat plate. The development of two-dimensional viscous incompressible flow generated from an impulsively started and uniformly accelerated infinitesimally thin flat plate is simulated numerically. A dynamic mesh（DM） method based on the spring analogue and local remeshing is applied to realize the mesh motion caused by the started plate. Researches show that the mesh quality will decline under large grid shear force during the updating process. To conquer this problem, a region near the plate is separated to guarantee the mesh quality at location of interest which is the innovation of the present paper. All computations at least cover a period during which the plate translates 6 times its length. The simulated instantaneous velocity profiles, flow structures and drag coefficients under several Reynolds numbers （20 ≤ Re ≤ 126） and accelerations （20 m/s2≤ a ≤ 152 m/s2） are presented and compared with existing results in literatures. Comparisons are found to be satisfactory, confirming the validity of the current proposed method（region separated DM）. The proposed DM method is firstly used to study the transient flow generated from a started flat plate and can be used in further study of transient characteristics during transient operations of turbo machineries.
Instability of pump turbine with S-shaped curve is characterized by large fluctuations of rotational speed during the transient processes.For investigating this phenomenon,a numerical model based on the dynamic sliding mesh method(DSSM)is presented and used to numerically solve the 3D transient flow which is characterized by the variable rotation speed of runner.The method is validated by comparison with measured data for a load rejection process in a prototype pump turbine.The results show that the calculated rotation speed agrees well with the experimental data.Based on the validated model,simulations were performed for the runaway process using an artificially assumed operating condition under which the unstable rotation speed is expected to appear.The results confirm that the instability of runner rotational speed can be effectively captured with the proposed method.Presented results include the time history profiles of unit flow rate and unit rotating speed.The internal flow characteristics in a typical unstable period are discussed in detail and the mechanism of the unstable hydraulic phenomenon is explained.Overall,the results suggest that the method presented here can be a viable alternative to predict the dynamic characteristics of pump turbines during transient processes.
