Numerical Study of a Pipe Extension Effect in Draft Tube on Hydraulic Turbine Performance

Draft tube of Francis type hydraulic turbine usually consists of: cone, elbow and diffuser. On the contrary, in some power stations an extra pipe should be added to the draft tube at the bottom of cone because of installation limitation. In this paper, this special case has been numerically studied. To this end CFD analysis was applied to simulate all parts of hydraulic turbine. A homogeneous multiphase model with Rayleigh-Plesset cavitation model was applied for presence of cavitation. The results reveal that the additional tube causes pressure drop and severe cavitation at the trailing edge of runner blades. Also, results showed that the efficiency reduces in comparison with original hill-diagram of model test in which this extension was not considered. With the removal of the extension tube, the efficiency increased significantly. The comparison of pressure recovery factors along draft tube, and theoretical investigation showed that the height of the draft tube is an important parameter and addition of an extra pipe will cause reduction in draft tube performance and increases the probability of occurrence of cavitation under the runner.