Numerical Simulation of a Rotor-Stator Unsteady
Interaction in a Propeller Turbine
Gagnon J.M.1 , Deschênes C.2
1 Laboratoire de Machines Hydrauliques, Université Laval, Québec, Québec, G1K 7P4, Canada
2 Laboratoire de Machines Hydrauliques, Université Laval, Québec, Québec, G1K 7P4, Canada
Email: jean-mathieu.gagnon.1@ulaval.ca
A BSTRACT
Low-head power plants are expected to be imple-
mented increasingly in the future. Propeller turbines
are well suited for this type of application. This pa-
per analyzes unsteady rotor-stator interactions in a pro-
peller turbine. The flow behaviour is studied with nu-
merical simulations using a 3-D Navier-Stokes solver
and a k − ε turbulence model (code ANSYS CFX).
Flow phenomena such as wake interaction and prop-
agation behind guide vanes as well as potential inter-
action and dynamic load on runner blades and guide
vanes are analysed. The comparison of interaction
intensities is done for three operating conditions. It
is found that rotor-stator interactions in propeller tur-
bines are weak considering runner blades’ torque am-
plitude. Main phenomena are of potential natures and
also induced by wakes behind guide vanes. Interaction
intensities are increased as we move away from opti-
mal operation point. An experimental investigation is
currently being prepared for validation and will pro-
vide insight for improving CFD simulations of axial
hydraulic machinery in future studies.
1 I NDRODUCTION
To avoid overdesign and maintain durability in an op-
timization process, one must be aware of all dynamic
forces interacting on the system. In hydraulic ma-
chinery, rotor-stator interaction may be considered as
the source of unsteady phenomena and dynamic force
fluctuations. These phenomena are of interest to im-
prove turbine design and to reach better efficiency at
off-peak condition.
Extensive literature is available on rotor-stator in-
teractions and turbine flows. Numerical analysis of
turbomachine flows were also presented in many
papers from the IAHR conference ([1], [2]). In many
researches on Francis turbines and pump-turbines
([3], [4], [5]), blades torque, guide vane forces and
pressure fluctuations are chosen as unsteady flow
parameters of interest. In another study, Nenne-
mann and al. [6] have found a method to study
interactions with CFD. An important amount of
information can also be found in axial turbine flow
studies from Lakshminaryana [7] or Zaccaria [8] even
though their work considers mainly compressible flow.
The objective of the present study is to provide a bet-
ter understanding of rotor-stator interactions in stream-
wise and spanwise directions of a propeller-turbine at
partial, peak and overload conditions. The flow in
these different operating regimes, especially at off-
peak conditions, reveals phenomena of interest for ex-
perimentalists and CFDers working in the field of hy-
draulic machinery. In particular, we observe poten-
tial interactions, wake interactions and other viscous
interactions as blade tip vortices or Von Karman vor-
tices. In this paper, we will focus on the two first inter-
actions and seek relations regarding unsteady runner
blade torque, guide vanes forces and pressure fluctua-
tions as a function of operating conditions. These pa-
rameters are analyzed at various locations in one pas-
sage of the rotor-stator. The simulations consider a
passage made of 4 guide vanes and one runner blade
out of a total of respectively 24 guide vanes and 6 run-
ner blades for the entire machine. This type of passage
modelling is common in turbine numerical simulations
since it allows to reduce computing effort compared to
a full simulation. Also, the system has an even pitch
ratio indicating that no considerable benefits would be
retrieve regarding flow physics or unsteady phenom-
ena prediction accuracy with a complete turbine sim-
ulation. A cut plane of the investigated propeller tur-
bine is illustrated in Figure 1 with a passage slice in
the meridional plane illustrated by the dashed line.

Figure 1: Cut plane of the propeller turbine
2 P ROBLEM DESCRIPTION
Variations of flow rate and guide vanes angle lead
to unstable flow inducing unsteady phenomena. Un-
steadinesses increase as the turbine operating regime
is moved away from best efficiency point. Numeri-
cal simulation accuracy decreases for low hydraulic
efficiency operation. Regime situated much off-peak
may lead to non-physical results. Therefore, we con-
sider three regimes for this study, illustrated in figure
2, where off-peak conditions are very close to nomi-
nal regime (point 2). Operating regimes are caracter-
ized by ϕ∗ , representing the flow rate coefficient (ϕ)
divided by the ϕ at the best efficiency point. The sym-
bol η represents the efficiency as usual.
To study non-stationnary phenomena, we use a Fast
Fourier Transform of temporal signals. Pressure re-
lated phenomena (torque on blades, forces) are seen in
the rotating reference frame with peak on the power
spectrum at a frequency equal to guide vanes pass-
ing frequency, fgv = Ngv ∗ fr , where Ngv is the num-
ber of guide vanes and fr is the rotor frequency. In
the stationary frame, upstream from the runner, pres-
sure fluctuations occur at the blades passing frequency,
fb = Nb ∗ fr , where Nb is the number of runner blades.
Note that potential interactions are global phenomena
and will be seen upstream and downstream of the flow
field. We may see other unsteady phenomena such as
wake interaction or Von Karman vortices with higher
harmonics on the signal power spectrum. These inter-
actions are convective phenomena and are seen only
downstream of vanes or blades.
3 C OMPUTATIONAL METHODS
We consider an incompressible unsteady 3-D turbulent
flow in the rotor-stator passage of the propeller turbine
at model scale. The continuity and unsteady Reynolds-
averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) equations are used
in combination with k − ε turbulence model to close
Figure 2: Three investigated regimes of the axial tur-
bine
the system of equations. The advection scheme that
was used blends automatically between 1st and 2nd or-
der when necessary. This allows to maintain robust-
ness within the code without loosing accuracy. Con-
vergence is obtained for RMS residuals velocities and
pressure of 10−5 in all simulations. For transient cases,
the chosen timestep corresponds to an angular dis-
placement of 1 degree.
Since the domain contains stationnary vanes and ro-
tating blades, a way of interfacing the two portions of
the mesh is needed. Several types of interface were
used for steady and unsteady calculations. First, we
estimated mesh performance and torque on the runner
blade with a steady simulation averaging the circum-
ferential velocity at the interface (Stage simulation).
Since the effect of circumferential velocity is filtered
through the averaging operation, it makes possible the
use of a partial stator passage having only one guide
vane and one stay vane. Other types of simulations
were performed using a Frozen rotor for steady calcu-
lations and a Transient Rotor-Stator interface for un-
steady calculations with four guide vanes. Frozen ro-
tor simulation cases were used as initial conditions for
unsteady calculations. Figure 3 below shows the inter-
face definition on the left with a stator pitch angle of
15 degrees in the azimutal plane for Stage calculations
and on the right with a 60-degree rotor-stator passage.
Figure 3: Rotor-stator interface with boundary condi-
tions for a) pitch ratio=0.25 b) pitch ratio=1
The range of Reynolds numbers along with the con- 1000k elements has been chosen for the simulations.
stant parameters are provided in Table 1. This mesh gives results within 5% of the experimental
torque (figure 4, left).
Table 1: Parameters
Parameters Value unit
4 R ESULTS
ReD 4.5-5e8 -
ReL 2.5-3.6e7 - Unsteady simulations allow to compute dynamic
Viscosity 1.071e-6 m/s2 torque on a blade and force on guide vanes. Figure
Rotation speed 90.792 rad/s 5 shows temporal force signals for the guide vanes
Hydraulic energy 68.463 J/kg of one complete passage and frequency spectrum for
Max efficiency 89 % one guide vane at nominal condition. The fluctuation
amplitude shown on the spectrum (bottom figure) is
ReD based on rotor diameter
ReL based on guide vane chord length about 3 % of the average force for guide vane 1. Other
guide vane force fluctuations are of the same order of
Boundary conditions are defined as periodic on both magnitude as one can estimate in temporal signal fig-
side of the rotor and stator domains, i-e. besides guide ure. Investigation of forces fluctuations amplitudes at
vanes and blades. Inlet condition at the stator domain ϕ∗ = 0.96 and ϕ∗ = 1.07 gave respectively 1.7% and
is constant flow oriented in a standard direction for a 3.5%, indicating a slightly stonger transient effect at
semi-spiral casing. Runner outlet condition is fixed overload conditions. The peak amplitude of the sig-
with constant relative static pressure. nal corresponds to a normalized frequency f / fb = 1
and is attributed to the potential interaction induced by
the runner as the blade passes in front of guide vanes.
3.1 Mesh considerations Deviation of the mean guide vanes forces from a sin-
gle average force for all guide vanes, as should be ex-
A structured hexaedral 3-D mesh is used in simu- pected, may be due to innacuracies of the mesh at pe-
lations. Mesh sensitivity based on the experimental riodic and transient interfaces, thus inducing interpo-
torque and y+ values on the blade are shown in figure lation imprecisions at the mesh section.
4.

Figure 4: Influence of the mesh size on runner blade

torque and local y+, ϕ∗ = 1

The coarse mesh exceeds the recommended y+ value

of 200 for the solver. Fine and medium meshes do
not present major difference since refinement has been
made mostly in the free stream. Further investiga-
tion of meshes with refinement in the boundary layer
may get results closer to the experimental torque value
on the blade. A medium mesh with a total of about
Figure 5: Top: temporal force signals of the four guide
vanes and Bottom: frequency spectrum of one force
signal
Torque spectrum on runner blades was plotted in Fig-
ure 6 to show the unsteady flow effect on the blades
at partial load, peak and overload conditions. Maxi-
mum torque fluctuations occur at overload conditions
(ϕ∗ = 1.07) and are about 0.14 % of the model experi-
mental averaged torque for that regime. These low dy-
namic fluctuation amplitudes may be explained by the
large gap between stationary and rotating components,
allowing space for damping, and by the low operating
head of the machine. Nevertheless, the phenomena is
strong enough for its frequency to be measured. Fig-
ure 6 shows peaks at f / fb = 4 for the three operating
regimes. The higher torque fluctuation amplitudes for
ϕ∗ = 1.07 tells us that the unsteadiness has a stronger
effect on torque at overload condition. This is consis-
tent with what is found for guide vane forces. There is
almost no difference in intensitiy between conditions
ϕ∗ = 1 and ϕ∗ = 0.96. The low flow rate that was used
as the initial condition at partial load may be an expla-
nation for the low fluctuation amplitudes.
Figure 6: Rotor torque spectrum on runner blade for
three regimes
To assess the rotor-stator interface performance, two
numerical pressure points were placed close one from
the other on both sides of the domain interface (figure
7).
Figure 7: Investigated monitor pressure points across
the interface
Static pressure temporal signal and relative amplitude
fluctuations were investigated for these two points at
nominal condition (ϕ∗ = 1). Comparison of spectrums
between Figure 8 and 9 shows that there is pressure
damping across the interface which acts as a linear fil-
ter: the pressure fluctuation amplitude on the stator
side is about one order of magnitude larger than the
pressure fluctuation on the rotor side. Having a closer
look, the static pressure amplitude maximum variation
is 0.8% versus 0.06% of the total head for the respec-
tive figures. The fluctuation is probably due to numeri-
cal damping. This put forward the importance to build
in future work interfaces allowing perfect flow carac-
teristics match. To allow this, the mesh should fit per-
fectly in time and in space across the interface. This
means that we would need a timestep corresponding
to one mesh cell and the mesh would need to be geo-
metrically identical between rotor and stator interface.
In that way, there is no interpolation on the general grid
interface (GGI) and all information is transmitted.
Figure 8: Stator static pressure monitor close upstream
of the interface
Figure 9: Rotor static pressure monitor close down-
stream of the interface
Further investigation of the flow was done at various
locations, shown in Figure 10.
Figure 10: Pressure points location investigated for a)
guide vanes in the spanwise direction from lower dis-
tributor (LD) to upper distributor (UD) and b) the rotor
blade in the streamwise direction from leading edge
(LE) to trailing edge (TE)
Pressure spectrum of Figure 11 and 12 gives us a clear
indication of the interactions intensities for streamwise
and spanwise pressure points of the rotor and the stator.
Figure 11: Pressure spectrum downstream guide vanes
from lower distributor (LD) to upper distributor (UD)
- spanwise direction
One may see in Figure 11 that peak amplitudes are de-
creasing quickly as the gap between guide vanes and
runner blades is increasing and as we move from lower
distributor (LD) to upper distributor (UD) on low right
axis. Maximum static pressure fluctuations are 0.8%
of the machine head and at a normalized frequency
f / fb = 1 for the monitor point (mp) near the LD. Near
the UD, only peaks of low amplitude (below 0.1%)
at f / fb = 4 remain. The streamwise blade-to-blade
channel mp spectrum in Figure 12 shows similar be-
havior as the stator mp but the pressure damping is less
important. Again, maximum fluctuations are found for
ϕ∗ = 1.07 for all investigated points.
Figure 12: Pressure spectrum inbetween rotor blades
from the leading edge to trailing edge - streamwise di-
rection
Potential interactions are seen on both figures at nor-
malized frequencies of 1 and 4 respectively. Higher
harmonic peaks may be attributed either to noise or to
other types of interactions that would necessitate fur-
ther investigation. In our case, we see other peaks at
low span near the lower distributor in Figure 11, where
phenomena occur at a normalized frequency of 2. Fig-
ure 12 shows also peaks around 5 and 7.
4.1 Wake interactions
A series of circumferential stations has been plotted
to investigate the meridional velocity field at nominal
condition on these stations. An exemple of midspan
stations is shown in Figure 13 and Figures 14 to 16
illustrate the velocity profiles as a function of stream-
wise and circumferential (Theta) directions. Note that
the stations are curved and follow the circumferential
direction in Theta, giving a 60-degrees arc of the pas-
sage. Similar curves were traced near the lower dis-
tributor and near the upper distributor to see the effect
of rotor-stator gap.
Figure 13: Midspan stations
We note that guide vanes wakes caracterized by the ve-
locity fluctuations are dissipating very fast at the hub
and midspan stations of Figure 14 and 15. This is an-
other notification of the filter effect across the interface
which is located after the third profile from the guide
vanes (bottom right axis). Also for these cases, the last
velocity profile just before the blade shows variation
induced by the downstream runner blade and there is
no wavy paterns induced by guide vanes wakes at that
station.
In Figure 16, a series of meridional velocity profiles
have been drawn at a near shroud location. For this
case, there are still some fluctuations of velocity on the
Figure 16: Meridional velocity profiles for near lower
last profile, near the rotor blade. The meridional veloc-
distributor stations
ity variations are reflected through the pressure field at
higher harmonics indicating the presence of wake in-
teractions. 4.1.1 Further analysis

A blade-to-blade contour of turbulent kinetic energy,

vorticity and static pressure was plotted to see further
effects of the wake at overload condition (ϕ∗ = 1.07).
Contours are plotted near the shroud to better capture
the effect of the wake interaction with runner blades.
In Figure 17a), one can see that the turbulent kinetic
energy reaches a high value after the interface (grey
wavy pattern) and that high region of turbulent kinetic
energy is touching the blades. This indicates the pres-
ence of wake interaction for this region and operating
regime. In Figure 17b), the vorticity dissipates quickly
in the rotor passage after the interface. The effect of
filtering is evident from the dark contour of high vor-
ticity turning quickly to grey (low vorticity).
Figure 14: Meridional velocity profiles near upper dis-
tributor stations

Figure 17: Near lower distributor blade-to-blade con-

tour of a) Kinetic turbulent energy b) Vorticity - ϕ∗ =
1.07

Finally, the static pressure contour of Figure 18 shows

Figure 15: Meridional velocity profiles for midspan the wavy pattern induced by the guide vanes wakes. It
stations is known in a low gap machine such as Francis, these
pressure fluctuations reach the runner blade. In our
case, the gap is too large between guide vanes and run-
ner blades so that interactions are weak potential in-
teractions considering the head of the machine and the
amplitude of the fluctuations.
Figure 18: Near shroud blade-to-blade static pressure
contour normalized with head
5 C ONCLUSION
Unsteady rotor-stator interaction has been studied
using the ANSYS CFX code for three operating
conditions. Analysis pointed out two types of interac-
tions, namely : potential and wake interactions. Blade
torque and guide vanes forces spectrums indicate phe-
nomena of low intensities since the turbine operates at
low head and since the gap between stationnary and
rotating parts is relatively large.
Pressure point analysis showed that potential interac-
tion intensities are decreasing quickly as the distance
between guide vanes and runner blades increases.
Fluctuation amplitude is also decreasing from rotor
blades’ leading edge to trailing edge. Investigation
of wake dissipation near the shroud shows that the
meridional velocity variation on a passage propagates
until it reaches the blade at low span and that wakes
interact with runner blades at this location.
All analysis put forward the filtering effect of the tran-
sient rotor-stator interface. Experimental analysis that
will follow this work will help to assess the physical
importance of this numerical effect.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The authors would like to thank Hydro-Quebec, NR-
Can and Alstom Hydro Canada Inc. for their financial
and technical supports. Their contribution of turbine
geometry and experimental model is of great impor-
tance to this research project.
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