Fluid Structure Interactions in Francis Turbines

HydroFlex on the Third Francis-99 workshop

HydroFlex co-organized the Third Francis-99 workshop taking place in Trondheim on May 28-29, 2019. Francis-99 is a series of three workshops, tightly coupled with the topics in HydroFlex work package 3 as well as the HiFrancis R&D-project jointly financed by the industry and the Research Council of Norway and executed at NTNU and EDR Medeso.

Francis-99 provides open access to complete design and measurement data of a model Francis turbine. It is an open platform for students, researchers and industry and gives the possibility of exploring and validating modelling methods and tools. The researchers can use these data and conduct state-of-the-art numerical studies by applying different tools and techniques. The main focus of the workshop was fluid structure interactions (FSI) in Francis turbines.

For more information about the Francis-99 workshop series, click here.

HydroFlex WP3 lead Chirag Trivedi was chairing the 3rd Francis-99 workshop and WP6 lead Bjarne Børresen delivered the keynote “Runner cracking – ten years later,” in which he emphasized the need for research to reduce the risk of runner cracking.

Two HydroFlex PhD Candidates working within WP3 presented first results of the HydroFlex project. Pietro Foti, NTNU, presented the paper “Evaluation of the Strain Density Value for Welded Joints Typical of Turbine Runner Blades”, in which he investigates the fatigue behaviour of welded joints through en energetic approach based on the Strain Energy Density failure criteria. Marija Lazarevikj, UKIM, presented the paper “Influence of the guide vanes design on stress parameters of Francis-99 turbine,” in which she aims to determine the impact of the geometry modification of the guide vanes on the Francis turbine stresses by performing numerical simulations.

HydroFlex Coordinator Prof Ole Gunnar Dahlhaug concluded the workshop by presenting the HydroFlex project and chairing a discussion about the need for and content of the next Francis-99 workshop series.