Design of Propeller Turbine for Micro Hydro Power Station Using CFD

Low head power plants are expected to be implemented increasingly in the future for economical, geographical and environmental purposes. Propeller turbines are well suited for these types of applications. They operate at higher flow rate, smaller head and faster rotational speed, thus being more compact than other types of machines; its design and performance improvement is of great concern. In the present work Runner and distributor of a Propeller turbine are designed using Bladegen software and a conical draft tube is designed in ICEM CFD. Blades geometry generated in Bladegen is exported to TURBOGRID to do its volumetric meshing. The complete passage of flow including distributor, runner and draft tube is numerically simulated using SST model in Ansys CFX. Simulations have been carried out at different speed of rotation varying from 316 rpm to 516 rpm keeping the discharge constant. The results obtained from flow simulations are found to be in accordance with turbine characteristics curves. Results and their variations with speed are represented graphically.