Synopsis

In recent years, high penetration of the power generated using intermittent energy namely, solar or wind has
impacted power grid operation significantly. This has raised concern about the grid stability and reliability since the
power generation is discrepant. On the other hand, electricity demand is never consistent and varies with time which
causes further disruption of the grid operation. Since hydropower is a major source of continual renewable energy, it
is widely accepted and used to balance the real time electricity demand. Thus, hydroelectric units are forced to
operate at variable power generation capacity irrespective of the efficiency. Consequently, the hydraulic turbines
experience critical operating conditions namely load acceptance, partial load rejection, startup, shutdown, emergency
shutdown and total load rejection. This has resulted in increased wear of the turbines as they are not exclusively
designed to operate under such critical conditions being experienced frequently.
The hydraulic turbines can be operated under any of the two conditions, namely steady state and transient.
Angular speed of the runner and discharge to the turbine are maintained constant during steady state operation. This
operating condition includes runaway though the generator does not produce power under this condition due to no
torque to the generator. During a transient operation, the angular speed of the runner, flow rate and the runner output
torque vary with the time. Transient operating condition includes load acceptance, partial and total load rejection,
start-up, and shutdown of the turbine.
In the turbine, discharge is regulated by operating the guide vanes to vary the power generation. The guide vanes
are moved through a governor which is operated in conjunction with the electricity demand. For example, the guide
vanes may need to constantly adjust the power generation due to continuous variation of electricity generation from
the wind and solar power as well as deregulated electricity demand. Hence, the guide vane operating scheme plays
significant role as transient loading of water pressure to the turbine runner is primarily dependent on the guide vanes
angular movement. Transient pressure loading develops significant hydrodynamic forces on the runner and may
result in more wear. Thus the main objective of the present work is to investigate the pressure loading on the turbine
during transient operating conditions to accommodate requirements of power grid. Apart from that, attempts have
been made to study the transient pressure loading of the guide vanes by selecting two schemes of angular movement
during startup and shutdown.
The presented research work has been carried out with the cooperation of three universities namely Indian
Institute of Technology Roorkee India, Lulea University of Technology Sweden, and Norwegian University of
Science and Technology (NTNU) Norway. Experimental measurements have been carried out at NTNU using
available test facility of the high head model Francis turbine. Based on literature review, extensive measurements
have been performed on the model Francis turbine to investigate the pressure loading and its consequences. The
measurements include both, steady state and transient, operating conditions of the hydraulic turbines. The steady
state experiments include performance analysis and pressure measurements during normal operating conditions and
runaway. Experiments of transient involve measurement of flow parameters including instantaneous pressure during
load acceptance, partial load rejection, startup, shutdown, emergency shutdown with transition into total load
rejection, no-load runner acceleration and no-load deceleration. Apart from this, numerical simulations have been
carried out for steady state operating conditions for more insight of the flow field. Measurements, calibration,
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instrumentation and computation of the acquired data including representation of the processed data have been
carried out based on the guidelines provided in IEC 60193.
The model Francis turbine is installed at Water Power Laboratory, NTNU, Norway. It is a 1:5.1 scale down
model of a prototype operating at Tokke Power Plant, Norway. The power plant has four units of 110 MW which are
operating since 1961. The operating parameters of the model and prototype turbines are listed in Table 1. Since all
the prototypes are connected to a power grid of 50 Hz transmission line, they are operated at synchronous speed. The
angular speed (n) of the prototype units is about 6.25 Hz. Dimensionless specific speed (NQE) of the turbine is 0.27
which is estimated using Equation (1). The dimensionless value namely speed factor (nED) and discharge factor (QED)
was determined using Equations (2) and (3), respectively; where, E is the specific hydraulic energy in Jkg-1.

NQE

nED
QED

2 n QP

2 gH P

3
4

[-]

(1)

[-]

(2)

[-]

(3)

nD
E
Q
D

Table 1 Operating and geometrical parameters of the model Francis turbine and prototype
Parameter

Prototype

Model

Synchronous speed (nED)

0.18

0.18

Head

HP = 377 m

HM = 12 m

Discharge

QP = 31 m3 s-1

QM = 0.2 m3 s-1

Power

PP = 110 x 4 MW

PM = 30 kW

Runner diameter

DP = 1.778 m

DM = 0.349 m

Two acquisition systems have been used namely data required to prepare the efficiency hill diagram and data
from pressure sensors mounted in the turbine. Total eight sensors were mounted to acquire pressure-time data. Two
sensors namely PTX1 and PTX2 were mounted at the turbine inlet about 4.87 and 0.87 m away from the turbine
inlet, respectively. In the turbine, three locations were identified for the pressure measurements namely vaneless
space, runner and draft tube. One pressure sensor (VL01) was mounted at the vaneless space, between the guide
vanes and the runner inlet, to capture the unsteady pressure field developed in the vaneless space. Three pressure
sensors namely P42, S51, and P71 were mounted on the blade surfaces. The sensors P42 was mounted on the blade
pressure side, S51 mounted on the blade suction side, and P71 was mounted on the blade trailing edge. The data
from these three sensors were acquired using a wireless telemetry system. Two pressure sensors namely DT11 and
DT21 were mounted at the draft tube cone, runner downstream.
First steady state measurements were carried out to evaluate the turbine performance hill curve. The estimated
uncertainty for the hydraulic efficiency was 0.16% at the best efficiency point (BEP) operating condition. To
prepared constant efficiency hill diagram, total 150 operating points were selected covering the entire operating
range. The angular position of the guide vanes was varied by approximately one degree in the range of 3.9 14.
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Head available at the turbine inlet was 12 m for BEP operating condition and the maximum head was about 12.5 m
for the lowest discharge operating condition. The constant efficiency hill diagram was prepared which showed that
BEP was located at the guide vanes angular position = 9.9, nED = 0.18, QED = 0.15, and hydraulic efficiency h =
93.4%. The lowest efficiency (76%) was observed at the low operating condition, = 3.9, nED = 0.18, and QED =
0.06. During measurements of performance analysis, significant torque fluctuations were observed at specific
operating speed range and guide vanes angular positions. The fluctuations can be attributed to unsteady pressure
pulsations developed in the vaneless space due to rotor stator interaction over a particular range of speed of the
runner and corresponding discharge.
The numerical simulation was performed using two turbulence models namely standard k- and SST k-, with
high resolution advection scheme. Figure 1 shows comparison of the numerical and experimental values of
hydraulic efficiencies at the five operating points. The lowest difference between the experimental and numerical
hydraulic efficiencies was observed at BEP as 0.85% and 1.58% for standard k- and SST k- respectively. The
maximum difference was observed at a part load operating condition which was 11.44% and 14.05% for standard k-
and SST k- respectively. Both the turbulence models performed reasonably well near BEP where the flow is
expected to be attached. It seems that at part load the models may have underestimated the losses and thus over
predicted the efficiency.

95

h (%)

90
85

Experimental

80

NUM_Standard k-
NUM_SST k-

75
70
0.06

NUM_2nd order (=1), standard k-

0.10

0.14
Q (m3s-1)

0.18

0.22

Figure 1 Comparison of the experimental and numerical hydraulic efficiencies at five operating conditions of the
model Francis turbine
For runaway steady state measurements, total six operating points were selected namely three at part load
discharges (3.9, 6.7, and 8.1), one at BEP discharge (9.9) and two at high discharge conditions (12.4 and 14).
During runaway operating condition ( = 14), significantly high pressure fluctuations were observed. Amplitudes of
the observed pressure fluctuations in the vaneless space, runner, and draft tube were about 2.4, 2.6, and 1.6 times of
that of BEP condition. This may induce fatigue stresses to the blades since pressure loading was more than two times
of the normal operating conditions.
Another set of experiment includes transient measurements during load acceptance, partial load rejection, startup
and shutdown, runner acceleration and deceleration at no-load operating condition, and emergency shutdown with
transition into total load rejection. During load acceptance, power output from the turbine was increased by opening
the guide vanes from one operating point to another and thus three operating point were selected for measurements.
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For partial load rejection, similar steps were followed as load acceptance in reverse order, where the power output
was decreased by closing the guide vanes from one point to another. For the startup, initially the turbine was in still
position ( = 0), synchronised at the minimum load ( = 4), and load increased to corresponding point. Similarly
for shutdown, load to the turbine was decreased, generator was decoupled from the minimum load ( = 4), and set
to no-spin condition of the runner ( = 0). For both the transients, four operating points were selected and two
schemes of the guide vanes movement namely normal movement and rapid movement for each operating point were
considered. The normal movement corresponds to the available normal timing of guide vanes opening/closing for the
turbine startup/ shutdown in the laboratory (similar to the prototype) and for the rapid startup/ shutdown, the guide
vanes were moved faster than the normal. The emergency shutdown with transition into total load rejection was
performed at three operating conditions namely part load ( = 5.4), BEP load ( = 9.9), and the maximum load (
= 14). Initially emergency shutdown was performed at the corresponding steady state load by bringing down the
generator speed and then the total load rejection was followed by quickly bringing down the electromagnetic torque
to zero.
During transients of load acceptance and partial load rejection, the maximum variation of the flow parameters
was observed during partial load rejection of 66%. Overall head variation was about 6% from the operating value of
12.1 m. The other parameters, namely discharge and hydraulic torque, were varied corresponding to the guide vanes
angular movement. Turbine start-stop measurements showed that the pressure at the vaneless space was not much
influenced by the guide vanes movement, however, unsteady pressure fluctuations were observed in the runner.
During normal and rapid movements of the guide vanes, pressure amplitudes and loading on the runner were almost
similar.
Measurements for total load rejection of the turbine showed significantly high pressure loading to the runner. The
guide vanes were closed immediately after the total load rejection within 8 s at the closing speed of 1.7 mm s-1 from
the position of 14. Head variation across the turbine was the maximum as compared to all transient conditions and
was about 19% with the pressure rise at the turbine inlet to about 14%. The runner was accelerated to the runaway
speed (174%) within 1.4 s immediately after start of the total load rejection. Figure 2 shows transient pressure
variation at the blade pressure side (P42), suction side (S51), and trailing edge (P71) during emergency shutdown
with transition into total load rejection from full load ( = 14). The pressure value was normalised using Equation
(4). The fluctuating instantaneous pressure ( p ) was fractioned using reference pressure (E)BEP as 116.84 kPa.

pE

p
E BEP

(4)

During emergency shutdown, pressure at the runner locations decreased rapidly since the runner speed was
decreased. During total load rejection, about 10% pressure rise was observed at the location P42. At the trailing edge
location P71, the pressure was continuously decreased up to 64 kPa from the operating value of 103 kPa. The
dimensionless pressure ( pE ) was 0.59, which corresponds to the lowest acquired pressure at the runaway speed
value observed at t 5 s. After the complete closing of the guide vanes (t = 13 s), the pressure at the location P42
decreased further however at the locations P71, the pressure increased slowly up to the atmospheric value and
stabilised after the no-spin condition of the runner (t = 79 s). In the Figure 2, pressure fluctuations cannot be seen
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since instantaneous mean pressure of the fluctuating quantity is presented. Amplitudes of the pressure fluctuations on
the blade pressure side and trailing edge were about 10% and 9.3% of the instantaneous mean pressure value,
respectively. On the suction side, the amplitudes of the fluctuations were about 8.3% of the instantaneous mean
pressure value.

Figure 2 Transient pressure variation in the runner locations blade pressure side (P42), suction side (S51) and trailing
edge (P71) during emergency shutdown with transition into total load rejection from full load ( = 14.0)
During transients of partial load rejection, high amplitude pressure pulsations in the runner were observed about
1.2 times larger than that of the load acceptance with the closing of guide vanes. Thus the partial load rejection may
have more damaging effects as compared to the load acceptance. The measurements on the turbine during start-stop
showed that pressure loading on the runner blades was not affected by the selected rates of the guide vanes
movement. During rapid movement, the start-stop cycle was completed in almost half of the time required for
normal start-stop cycle. Thus rapid movement will reduce unsteady pressure loading time and may be less damaging
as compared to the normal movement. Moreover, faster start-stop of the turbine is beneficial for quick start-stop to
balance the grid disturbances. During total load rejection, the amplitudes at the rotor stator interaction frequency in
the runner for the runaway speed were about 2.6 and 1.6 times of that of BEP operating condition at the pressure side
and trailing edge of the blade, respectively. It was observed that the rapid closing of the guide vanes after total load
rejection accelerates the runner to runaway speed and then decelerates immediately. Hence the turbine may subject
to critical conditions for reduced time. But this increases amplitude of pressure pulsations at the turbine upstream
which may more than two times of the operating pressure. An optimized movement of the guide vanes may reduce
significantly the pressure loading to the turbine during transient operations of the hydraulic turbine.

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List of peer reviewed publications based on this work

[1]

Chirag, T., Bhupendra, G., and Cervantes, M., 2013, Effect of Transients on Francis Turbine Runner Life: A
Review, J. Hydraulic Res., 51(2), pp. 121132. doi:10.1080/00221686.2012.732971

[2]

Chirag, T., Cervantes, M., Bhupendra, G., and Dahlhaug, O., G., 2013, Experimental and Numerical Studies
for a High Head Francis Turbine at Several Operating Points, ASME J. Fluids Eng., 135(11), p. 111102:1-17.
doi:10.1115/1.4024805

[3]

Chirag, T., Cervantes, M., Bhupendra, G., and Dahlhaug, O., G., 2013, Experimental Investigations of
Transient Pressure Variations in a High Head Model Francis Turbine During Start-up and Shutdown,
Accepted for publication in J. Hydrodynamics., 2013.

[4]

Chirag, T., Cervantes, M., Bhupendra, G., and Dahlhaug, O., G., 2013, Pressure Measurements on a High
Head Francis Turbine During Load Acceptance and Rejection, Accepted for publication in J. Hydraulic Res.,
2013.

[5]

Chirag, T., Cervantes, M., Bhupendra, G., and Dahlhaug, O., G., 2013, Transient Pressure Measurements on
a High Head Model Francis Turbine during Emergency Shutdown, Total Load Rejection, and Runaway,
Communicated to ASME J. Fluids Eng., October 2013.

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