69 / 94
INDUSTRIAL PHD
Background
About 30% of all High Head Francis turbines
installed worldwide are located in Norway. The
average age of a Norwegian hydro power plant
is 45 years, and many show sign of fatigue and
needs to be refurbished. A serious concern is
that some newly refurbished high head power
plants have experienced failures after having
new and modern Francis runners installed. The
main problem is that the turbine runner develop
cracks in the blades due to cyclic loads.
Objective
The objective of this project is to establish a
correct modeling approach with respect to
High Head Francis turbines. A stepwise fluid-
structure coupling will be used to handle the
interaction in the runner. Reduction of the
simulation time by means of model order
reduction will be investigated.
The primary output of the project will be a
recommended practice and toolkit for FSI
simulations on High Head Francis turbines.
This is an industrial PhD project with EDR-
Medeso, supported by The Research Council
of Norway.
Department of Energy and
Process Engineering
2016-2019
FSI Simulation of
Steady and Transient
Operation of a High
Head Francis Turbine
Supervisor:
Pål-Tore Storli
Erik Tengs
69