Research On CAD/CFD Design Platform Of Tubular Turbine

Nowadays, with very limited medium-higher head hydropower resources leftafter having been developed in our country, the development of lower headhydropower resources became the hot topic focused in national hydropower industryonce again. Tubular turbine was the most suitable hydraulic machinery for developinglower head hydropower resources. In our country, compared to other types ofhydraulic turbines, studies on tubular turbine began later and processed at a slowerpace. So there were very limited alternative tubular turbine impellers of differenttypes. To satisfy the urgent need for tubular turbine impellers with high performancein national hydropower industry, it was of great significance to improve the designmethod of tubular turbine based on existing good tubular turbine impellers and to getbetter impellers with higher efficiency and improved stability.With the rapid development of computer technologies, CAD and CFDtechnologies were basically mature. Commercial software, such as Fluent, had beenwidely applied to the design and performance prediction of hydraulic machinery. Inthis thesis, a hydraulic design platform of tubular turbine impellers was created basedon CAD/CFD. This platform included CAD, CFD two software packages and onehydraulic model database. Based on comparison and selection, proper detailedsoftware of CAD, CFD and database and language for their secondary developmentwere determined, which settled a good basis for CAD/CFD platform.CAD design procedures of tubular turbine were determined and its CADsoftware package was developed based on practical engineering selection methodcommonly used of tubular turbine impellers and mature impeller blade shapemodification principles of tubular turbine, taking advantage of VBA secondarydevelopment environment for MDT. The review of good hydraulic modelsaccumulated for many years was included in the development of CAD softwarepackage. Then a hydraulic model database was formed based on the review, whichwas useful for the selection and modification of flow passage parts. The CFD software package of tubular turbine was developed using VC++programming language based on the log file characteristic of Fluent software package.For tubular turbine prototype at Hekou power station,3-D modeling, grid generation,simulation analysis of3-D flow inside the tubular turbine flow passage and tubularturbine performance prediction were performed using CFD technologies by applyingCFD software package. Based on developed CAD/CFD design platform, the tubularturbine with better performance could be obtained as the improvement of tubularturbine prototype at Hekou power station by repetitive shape modification of impellerblade, flow simulation and performance prediction.The efficiency of improvedimpeller finally obtained is up to93%.The developed CAD/CFD design platform had been applied in practice for someenterprises. It shortened the hydraulic design cycle of tubular turbine greatly,strengthened the enterprises’ market competition and created great profits forenterprises.