Numerical analysis for detecting head losses in trifurcations of high head in hydropower plants

Carlos Andrés Aguirre, Ramiro Gustavo Ramirez Camacho, Waldir de Oliveira and François Avellan

Renewable Energy, 2019, vol. 131, issue C, 197-207

Abstract: Many different types of branching have been developed, such as bifurcation, trifurcation, and manifolds, among others. These configurations are used in penstocks to transport water from surge tanks to power houses in order to feed several turbines at the same time. This arrangement allows for smaller assembly costs in comparison with independent penstock systems. Nevertheless, such installations can generate higher head losses in the system in comparison with single systems. This study focuses on the quantification of these head losses as a function of volumetric flow rate using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and later validated with previously published results. To determine the coefficient of head losses three mesh settings were analyzed: hexahedral, tetrahedral and hybrid, for both a steady state and transitory flow. Based on the literature, the k-ω turbulence model was used, with refinement to elements near the wall to check y+. To the simulation transitory, the SAS model was used for analysis of the instability in the trifurcation.

Keywords: Trifurcation; CFD; Loss coefficient; SAS; Transient (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0960148118308188
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:renene:v:131:y:2019:i:c:p:197-207

DOI: 10.1016/j.renene.2018.07.021

Access Statistics for this article

Renewable Energy is currently edited by Soteris A. Kalogirou and Paul Christodoulides

More articles in Renewable Energy from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().