Design and Analysis of Pelton Bucket for Variation in its Surface Roughness

For power generation, in hilly areas, high head hydro power plants use Impulse turbine. All the available energy of water is converted to kinetic energy before water strikes the buckets. Buckets are designed such that water gets deflected by around 165. And it may also not strike the back of successive bucket. In the present work, geometric modeling of Pelton bucket has been done. Meshing has been done in ICEM CFD. Multiphase flow analysis has been done and various parameters have been found out for variation in surface roughness of the bucket. From results it has been found that as the friction in the bucket increases, force experienced by the jet on the bucket decreases.