Parametric Study of 2.5 kW Class Propeller Type Micro Hydraulic Turbine

Received 1 June, 2020 Revised 15 July, 2020 Accepted 30 August, 2020 Abstract >> A parametric study of a 2.5 kW class propeller type micro hydraulic turbine was performed. In order to analyze the internal flow characteristics in the hydraulic turbine, three dimensional Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes equations with shear stress transport turbulence model were used and the hexahedral grid system was used to construct computational domain. To secure the reliability of the numerical analysis, the grid dependency test was performed using the grid convergence index method based on the Richardson extrapolation, and the grid dependency was removed when about 1.7 million nodes were used. For the parametric study, the axial distance at shroud span (L) between the inlet guide vane and the runner, and the inlet and outlet blade angles (β1, β2) of the runner were selected as the geometric parameters. The inlet and outlet angles of the runner were defined in the 3 spans from the hub to tip, and a total of 7 geometric parameters were investigated. It was confirmed that the outlet angles of the runner had the most sensitive effect on the power and efficiency of the micro hydraulic turbine.