Study of Pressure Pulsation in Water Pump Turbine with Different Guide Vane Openings

Abstract

Pressure pulsation of water pump turbine has been a hot research issue in the industry. In order to study the influence of the change
of active guide vane opening on pressure pulsation under the pumping condition of water pump turbine, numerical simulationof multiple active guide vane openings under the pumping condition of a model water pump turbine is carried out based on the commercial Fluent computational platform using the SST k-turbulence model. The effects of active guide vane openings on the bladeless zone between the guide vane
and the runner, the tailpipe and the pressure pulsation in theworm casing are analysed by the time domain and frequency domain methods,
respectively.The results of the study show that, for the active guide vane of each opening, the pressure pulsation in the leafless area is the largest, followed by the pressure pulsation at the inletof the tailpipe, and the smallest at the outlet of the worm case; low-frequency pulsation exists in the whole flow path, and the high-frequency pulsation in the leafless area is the octave frequency of the runner blades.