Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 31 (10) (2017) 5041~5049

www.springerlink.com/content/1738-494x(Print)/1976-3824(Online)
DOI 10.1007/s12206-017-0952-0

CFD based design of a 4.3MW Francis turbine for improved performance at

design and off-design conditions†
Selin Aradag1,2,*, Hasan Akin1,2 and Kutay Celebioglu2
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Sogutozu cad No.43 06560 Ankara, Turkey
2
Hydro Energy Research Center (ETU Hydro), TOBB University of Economics and Technology, Sogutozu cad No.43 06560 Ankara, Turkey

(Manuscript Received February 20, 2017; Revised May 5, 2017; Accepted June 2, 2017)

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Abstract

Hydraulic turbines are designed for the available head and flow rate of the hydroelectric power plant. Design point usually gives the
best efficiency. However, when the turbine is used at off-design conditions where the flow rate and head change mostly because of
seasonal fluctuations, efficiency significantly reduces. Therefore, the objective of hydraulic turbine design is not only satisfying the
power requirements and maximum efficiency at the design point, but also improved characteristics at off-design conditions. In this work,
a 4.3 MW Francis turbine is designed with the help of Computational fluid dynamics. All turbine components are designed separately,
and then full turbine analyses are performed to confirm the design. Once an efficient design is obtained for the design head and flow rate,
CFD simulations for off-design conditions are performed to confirm the high efficiency of the turbine at these flow rate-head
combinations. The efficiency of the designed turbine is in the range of 90 to 92 % for a wide range of head and flow rates.
Keywords: Francis turbine; Off-design conditions; Turbine design; Hill chart; Hydroelectric power plant
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

1. Introduction
Every hydroelectric power plant has an available flow rate
and a head value that determine the possible energy that can
be obtained from the specific power plant. Each power plant
needs a unique turbine design compatible with its main prop-
erties: namely the head and the flow rate. Draft tube, runner,
guide vanes, stay vanes and spiral case are the main parts of a
Francis type turbine that is used to generate power at hydroe-
lectric power plants (Fig. 1). The cross-sectional area of the
spiral case decreases in the direction of flow and the flow
enters the stay vanes after the spiral case. The pressure loads Fig. 1. Francis turbine components.
are carried with the help of the stay vanes [1]. They also di-
rect the flow to guide vanes, where flow rate into the runner (CFD) in design became indispensable in turbine design as in
is adjusted. Flow from the guide vanes enter the runner, many applications [4-6].
which is the power generating part, radially and leaves axially The main objective of this research is to design a hydroelec-
[2]. Draft tube is used to re-increase the pressure of the fluid tric turbine taking both design and off-design conditions into
to exit pressure [3]. consideration for a specific power plant for high efficiency
There are several hydroelectric power plants designed and and performance. The power plant is planned to have a power
implemented from 1960’s to 2000’s that keep working with 6- of 4.3 MW for each turbine unit. All components of the tur-
8 % lower efficiency than possible [4]. The traditional way of bine are designed separately using computational fluid dy-
turbine design has required model experimental tests until re- namics and full turbine analyses are performed to verify the
cently. However, the usage of Computational fluid dynamics design. Once a workable and efficient design is obtained for
*
the design head and flow rate, the range of high efficiency is
Corresponding author. Tel.: +90 3122924267, Fax.: +90 3122924091
E-mail address: saradag@etu.edu.tr improved by modifying the design via CFD simulations of the
†
Recommended by Associate Editor Seong Hyuk Lee flow for off-design conditions. A hill chart demonstrating the
© KSME & Springer 2017
5042 S. Aradag et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 31 (10) (2017) 5041~5049

performance of the designed turbine for several head and flow

rates is constructed.

2. Methodology
The design process starts with the design of the runner
blades since the runner is the most important part of the turbine
that generates power. The inputs for the design are specific
properties of the plant: Q (volumetric flow rate), H (Head) [7].
Head is the difference of the inlet and outlet energies of the
turbine in meters. The energy is the combination of the pres-
sure, velocity and elevation terms. Per these parameters (head
and flow rate), basic runner angles of leading and trailing edges
are determined. As theoretical runner equations are derived
from Euler equation, they neglect turbulent and viscosity ef-
fects. Therefore, the optimization of the preliminary design is
necessary which is performed with CFD tools. CFD analysis
procedure is an iterative process which continues until the re-
quired efficiency, power, head and flow rate are reached with-
out cavitation. To reach to the required head, flow rate and
Fig. 2. Velocity triangles.
power output; in the iterative process, runner shape is changed
and CFD analysis procedure is repeated.
Spiral case and draft tube geometries are generated using
Autodesk Inventor [8] and the rest of the parts are generated
using Ansys Bladegen [9]. CFD analysis of the turbine com-
ponents are performed separately. The results are examined,
problems are determined and solved using an iterative process.
Once the parts are designed separately, full turbine analyses
are performed. After a working turbine geometry is obtained
for the design point, off-design performance of the turbine is
investigated by performing full-turbine simulations for several
possible flow rate and head values. The iterative process con-
tinues until a wide range of efficiency is obtained for several
head and flow rate combinations. Fig. 2 shows the velocity
triangles of a typical turbine runner and the angles of the blade
in axial view and Fig. 3 shows meridional view of the runner
blade. V shows fluid velocity, and u is the blade peripheral
velocity that is dependent on the rotational speed of the runner,
Vr and Vu are the radial and peripheral velocity components of Fig. 3. Meridional profile of the runner.
V and

u = wr (1)
r r r
V = Vu + Vr (2)
r r r
V =u +w. (3)

Guide vanes are the vanes that adjust the flow rate to the
turbine runner, therefore the power. Guide vane design pa-
rameters are shown in Fig. 4. Lg is the chord length, Dg is the
diameter of the circle defined from the center of rotation of the
guide vanes. tg, distance between the guide vanes and the an-
gle ao are also shown in the figure. Symmetrical NACA pro-
Fig. 4. Design parameters for the guide vanes.
files are used to determine the thickness of the guide vanes.
Parameters are changed in an iterative design process to de-
termine the optimum guide vane opening for best efficiency The cross-sectional area of the spiral case decreases in the di-
and high power generation. rection of flow and the flow enters the stay vanes after the
 S. Aradag et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 31 (10) (2017) 5041~5049
spiral case. The pressure loads are carried with the help of the
stay vanes. They also direct the flow to guide vanes. It is im-
portant to distribute the flow uniformly on the stay vanes and
guide vanes for spiral case design. Asymmetrical profiles are
usually selected for stay vanes as opposed to guide vanes for
better hydraulic efficiency [10]. The hydrostatic pressure is
also an important factor in stay vane design. Mechanical analy-
sis of stay vanes is performed together with the spiral case to
make sure they can hold the pressure. The angles of the stay
vanes are also optimized using an iterative procedure to be able
to direct the flow to the guide vanes with minimum loss.
The draft tube decreases the flow velocity so that the kinetic
energy loss is kept minimum. Pressure recovery factor is
maximized in the draft tube design. It is kept above 80 %.
Coarse meshes and upwinding scheme are used in the early
phases of the design, whereas high resolution advection
schemes with fine meshes are chosen for the final phases of
the design. Steady state, single phase analyses are computed
using ANSYS CFX v15.0 [11] software, based on Finite vol-
ume method that solves the incompressible pressure-based
Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equations. Based on our
previous studies [7] standard k-e model where k is the turbu-
lent kinetic energy and e is the turbulent dissipation rate, gives
accurate and reliable results in Francis type turbine simula-
tions, therefore k-e model is selected for modeling turbulence.
High order upwind scheme and second order centered scheme
are used for the convection term and diffusion term, respec-
tively. SIMPLE algorithm is used to perform pressure-velocity
iteration. Green-Gauss cell based method is used to compute
the gradients.
Total pressure and mass flow rate conditions are applied at
the inlet and outlet boundaries, respectively. The total pressure
used as an inlet condition for stay vanes, guide vanes and run-
ner, considers the efficiencies of the previous parts. For exam-
ple, the total pressure at the runner inlet is calculated by using
the total head subtracted by the losses before the runner, i.e, in
the stay vanes, guide vanes and spiral case. Atmospheric pres-
sure is used as an outlet boundary condition for the CFD
analysis of the draft tube. The inlet boundary condition for
draft tube computations is mass flow rate in the direction of
runner outlet which is the draft tube inlet. For the full turbine
analyses, total pressure at the spiral case inlet and atmospheric
pressure at the draft tube outlet are the boundary conditions.
Multiple frames of reference (MFR) [11] is employed in the
full turbine analyses to model the interaction of the parts with
each other. Runner is attached to the guide vane and draft tube
by frozen rotor interface. Multi-frame reference (MFR) is a
steady state approximation. In the frozen rotor approach, mo-
tion of the moving part is frozen in a specific position and the
instantaneous flow field with the rotor in that position is ob-
served. Cavitation simulations are implemented with homoge-
neous multiphase model. It allows modeling the mixture as a
pseudo-fluid. Thus, the governing equations consist of the
mass conservation, a set of momentum equations and a trans-
port equation for the volume fraction.
5043
Table 1. Basic design parameters of the turbine.
Design head [m] 126.7
Design flow rate [m3/s] 3.75
Efficiency [%] 0.92
Power [MW] 4.28
Angular velocity [rpm] 1000
3. Results
The total power expected from the HEPP under considera-
tion is 8.6 MW. Utilization of two turbine units is planned.
The head and flow rate are 126.7 m and 7.5 m3/s, which
makes the design flow rate of one turbine 3.75 m3/s. The pa-
rameters are shown in Table 1.
For the preliminary runner geometry, inlet diameter is 731
mm and the blade height is 118 mm. The number of blades is
15. Inlet angle for the runner is taken as 23° to start the CFD
simulations.
Dg for the guide vanes is 950 mm and the number of guide
vanes is 24. Guide vane length is taken as 144 mm to let 15 %
overlap for the fully closed position. NACA 0018 is used for
the thickness of the guide vane profiles. Inlet and outlet di-
ameters for the stay vanes are 660 mm and 565 mm. The
number of stay vanes is 16.
Free volumes between the blades and the volumes of spi-
ral case and draft tubes are meshed for stay vane, guide vane
and runner simulations. For all components, there is a limit
for the solution to be independent from the mesh and nu-
merical error decreases. For all components, mesh independ-
ency study is performed separately and different meshes
with different densities are utilized. For spiral case and stay
vanes, because of the complex geometry, unstructured mesh
is generated. Mesh refinement is performed in the most sen-
sible zones for each component such as spiral case perimeter
and stay vane blade periphery. A structured mesh is utilized
for the draft tube.
Mesh independent solutions are obtained for each turbine
part. Fig. 5 shows the different variables used to determine the
mesh independency of the solutions for every turbine part and
the independence of the final solutions from the mesh when
fine meshes are used. Average exit flow angle is used to de-
termine mesh independency of the CFD solution for the spiral
case, whereas the variable used for the draft tube is pressure
recovery factor as shown in Fig. 5.
Pressure recovery factor is chosen as a control parameter for
the draft tube:
pout ,s - pin ,s
cp = .
1
rVin2
2
Here, Pout,s is outlet static pressure, Pin,s is the inlet static
pressure for the draft tube, Vin is the velocity at the draft tube
inlet.
5044 S. Aradag et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 31 (10) (2017) 5041~5049

Table 2. Fine mesh properties of each turbine part. Table 3. Spiral case results.

Number of mesh Inlet Outlet

Mesh type
elements Total pressure [Pa] 1344240 1330060
Spiral case Tetrahedral 1280000 Static pressure [Pa] 1319710 1254440
Stay vanes (1/16) Hexahedral 232000 Velocity [m/s] 7.02 12.23
Guide vanes (1/24) Hexahedral 92000 Cross-sectional area [m ] 2
0.54 0.48
Runner blades (1/15) Hexahedral 253000 Head [m] 137.49 136.04
Draft tube Hexahedral 1082000 Velocity head [m] 2.51 7.61
Head loss [m] 1.45

(a)

Fig. 5. Mesh independency of the simulations.

The average velocities at the exits are used as control

variables for the stay vanes and guide vanes. The efficiency is
used for the runner of the turbine as a parameter to determine
if the solutions are mesh independent.
It is demonstrated in Fig. 5 that the parameter selected as a
control parameter does not change after a certain number of
mesh for each part of the turbine. For example, for the spiral
case, this number is 1280000 elements. It is 90000 for each of
the guide vanes and 250000 for a runner blade. Fine meshes (b)
that are decided to be used in the computations for each part of Fig. 6. Spiral case symmetry plane: (a) Pressure distribution; (b) veloc-
the turbine based on the mesh independence study are shown ity distribution and velocity vectors.
in Table 2.
Fig. 7 shows the angles at the exit of the spiral case. Each
oscillation in the figure corresponds to one stay vane. It is seen
3.1 Individual simulation results for turbine parts
in the figure that the flow angles going to the stay vanes from
Spiral case: the spiral case are the same; therefore, the radial and circum-
Designed spiral case has an efficiency of 98.9 % with a net ferential velocities are also the same. This is necessary for the
head loss of 1.45 m. Table 3 shows the design results for the stable operation of the turbine.
spiral case.
Fig. 6 shows the pressure distribution, velocity distribution Stay vanes:
and velocity vectors for the spiral case. The figure shows the The properties of the designed stay vanes are shown in Ta-
uniformly distributed flow with the help of both pressure con- ble 4. The total hydraulic loss is 0.32 m and the efficiency is
tours and the velocity vectors. 99.8 %.
 S. Aradag et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 31 (10) (2017) 5041~5049 5045

Table 4. Stay vane results. Table 6. Runner performance results.

Leading Trailing Angular velocity [rad/s] 104.72

Inlet Outlet
edge edge Reference diameter [m] 0.448
Static pressure [Pa] 1267690 1259450 1195210 1183010 Volumetric flow rate [m3/s] 3.75
Total pressure [Pa] 1326480 1326370 1323900 1323330 Head difference (Leading edge-trailing edge) [m] 118.18
Radial velocity [m/s] 7.52 7.85 9.08 9.57 Head difference (Inlet-outlet) [m] 118.93
Peripheral velocity Shaft power [MW] 4.304
7.44 7.76 12.61 13.71
[m/s]
Total efficiency [%] 98.4
Velocity [m/s] 10.58 11.33 15.63 16.73
Flow angle, α [o] 45.30 -45.23 36.69 34.95

Table 5. Guide vane analysis results.

Inlet Leading edge Trailing edge Outlet

Static pressure [Pa] 1184240 1164910 864064 817330
Total pressure [Pa] 1323440 1323120 1312470 1309290
Radial velocity [m/s] 9.50 10.13 11.69 12.24
Peripheral velocity [m/s] 13.57 13.98 26.40 28.89
(a)
Velocity [m/s] 16.57 17.50 28.96 31.38
Flow angle, α [o] 35 42.71 27.72 22.98

(b)

Fig. 7. Spiral case exit angles.

Guide vanes:
The results for the guide vane simulations are shown in Ta-
ble 5. The flow angle at the runner inlet is a crucial design pa-
rameter. Optimum guide vane angle that can provide the neces-
sary angle for the runner is determined in the guide vane design
process. The angle required for the runner inlet is 22.9°. This
(c)
design constraint is satisfied by the guide vanes. Flow angle for
the guide vane is optimized to be 35°. Total hydraulic loss in Fig. 8. (a) Streamlines around the guide vanes; (b) total pressure con-
the guide vanes is 1.44 m. Velocities in the guide vanes are tours; (c) streamlines on the runner blades.
higher than that of the stay vanes, which makes the guide vane
hydraulic loss more when compared to stay vanes.
Fig. 8(a) shows the three-dimensional flow between the performance of the turbine is directly affected by the perform-
guide vanes. The streamlines show neither separation nor ance of the runner which shows the efficiency. Performance
backflow. results for the designed runner are shown in Table 6. The hy-
draulic efficiency is 98.4 % for the runner.
Runner: Inlet flow angle is 22.9° and outlet flow angle is 70.45° for
Runner is the power generating part of the turbines. The the runner. Outlet flow angles close to 90 degrees mean that
5046 S. Aradag et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 31 (10) (2017) 5041~5049

Table 7. Draft tube performance results.

Inlet Outlet
Total pressure [Pa] 112416 105972
Static pressure [Pa] 47544 101308
Velocity [m/s] 11.41 2.68
2
Cross sectional area [m ] 0.35 1.55
Head [m] 11.5 10.84
Velocity head [m] 6.64 0.37
Head loss [m] 0.66
Pressure recovery factor 0.85

Fig. 10. Streamlines for the full turbine analysis.

distribution and streamlines for the flow in the draft tube.

There is no separation observed in the flow.

3.2 Results for the full turbine CFD analysis

(a)
(b)
Fig. 9. (a) Pressure distribution; (b) streamlines for the draft tube.
the circulation is nearly zero at the runner exit. Uniform pres-
sure contours for the runner and the streamlines which do not
show any signs of separation or backflow are shown in Fig. 8.
The main reason for the gradual pressure drop in the runner is
the hydraulic loss and power generation in the runner.
Cavitation can occur on surfaces where the velocities are
high and the static pressure is below the vapor pressure of the
fluid. It is the formation and dispersion of vapor bubbles. It
directly affects turbine performance and runner life. It is im-
portant to check the pressure distributions on the pressure and
suctions sides of the runner to make sure that the design is
cavitation free. The runner design is modified to make sure
that the pressures do not decrease below 20 kPa.
Draft tube:
Table 7 shows the performance results of the designed draft
tube. Total hydraulic loss is 0.66 m. Pressure recovery factor
is 0.85 for the designed draft tube. Fig. 9 shows the pressure
Streamlines for the whole turbine are shown in Fig. 10. The
figure shows clearly that the flow accelerates when it enters
the runner. It slows down in the draft tube. The flow in the
spiral case, stay vanes, guide vanes and runner is uniform,
whereas there are vortices in the draft tube as expected, be-
cause of the geometry of the draft tube.
Fig. 11 shows the interaction between the guide vane and
the runner. Total pressure and static pressure distributions and
velocity vectors are shown to examine this interaction. The
vortex street that forms at the trailing edge of the guide vanes
disappear before reaching the runner, as shown in the total
pressure contours. Static pressure decreases gradually from the
guide vanes to the runner exit. Stagnation points on the guide
vanes and runner blades are compatible with the symmetry
points at the leading edges. The flow reaches its maximum
velocities at guide vane exit. It changes magnitude and direc-
tion on the runner. It is also observed that the guide vane out-
let angle agrees with the runner inlet.
3.3 Determination of off-design performance of the turbine
36 possible flow rate and head combinations are simulated
to determine the off-design performance of the turbine. The
flow rate is adjusted by changing the guide vane opening.
Head range of the turbine is taken as 95 m to 145 m, and
changed with 10 m intervals for different simulations. 126.7 m
is the design head of the turbine. The turbine has a flow rate of
3.7 m3/s and 4.2 MW of power at the design point per full
turbine simulation results. When the runner is simulated alone
without attaching the other parts, the power is 4.3 MW and the
flow rate is 3.75 m3/s for the same head, which shows that the
results are similar for “part by part” and “full turbine” simula-
tions.
Fig. 12 shows the flow rate changing with the guide vane
opening for several head values. The flow rate increases from
 S. Aradag et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 31 (10) (2017) 5041~5049 5047

(a) Fig. 13. Power production of the turbine for different flow rates at
constant head.

(b)

Fig. 14. Head loss change with flow rate (For head = 126.7 m).

the closed position to α0 = 39° and then it starts decreasing.

(c)
Fig. 11. Guide vanes and runner symmetry plane: (a) Total pressure
distribution; (b) static pressure distribution; (c) velocity distribution
and velocity vectors.
Fig. 12. Change of flow rate with guide vane opening for constant head
values.
For the same guide vane opening, flow rate increases with
increasing head.
The power production of the turbine changing with the flow
rate is shown in Fig. 13. The slope of the power curves de-
crease as the flow rate increases above the design head. Dif-
ferent head values show similar power trends with changing
flow rate.
Fig. 14 shows the net head loss for each part of the turbine
for several flow rates at the design head of 126.7 m. It is seen
from the figure that runner is the part where most of the loss
occurs. Fig. 15 shows the efficiencies of all turbine parts
changing with flow rate at off-design conditions.
The efficiency hill chart of the designed turbine is shown in
Fig. 16 for constant angular velocity. The data in Table 7 is
used to construct the hill chart. The efficiency of the turbine is
between 92 % and 50 % for the flow rate range investigated.
However, it is demonstrated that the designed turbine works
with an efficiency of 90 to 92 % for a very wide range of head
and flow rate values. The head range for 90-92 % efficiency is
105 to 130 m, whereas the flow rate is between 2 m3/s and 4
m3/s for this efficiency.
The best efficiency for the design head of 126.7 m, is
92.09 % for a flow rate of 3.27 m3/s. For the design flow rate
of 3.75 m3/s, the efficiency is 91.94 % which is very close to
the best efficiency point.
5048 S. Aradag et al. / Journal of Mechanical Science and Technology 31 (10) (2017) 5041~5049

dynamics and full turbine analyses are performed for the con-
firmation of the design. Once a workable and efficient design
is obtained for the design head and flow rate, CFD simulations
for off-design conditions are also performed to make sure that
the designed turbine works with high efficiency at these flow
rate-head combinations, as well. The method presented covers
both design and off-design conditions and is applied to a case
study, at the end of which the designed turbine is manufac-
tured and implemented at an actual power plant.
(a) It is demonstrated that “part by part” and “full turbine” CFD
simulation results are in good agreement, which shows that
“part by part” simulations for which the CFD aided design of
each part of the turbine is performed separately can be chosen
to save computational time and resources, since “full turbine”
simulations required a computational cluster.
The designed turbine works with an efficiency of 90-92 % for
a wide range of head and flow rate values (Head of 105 to 130
m and flow rate of 2 to 4 m3/s). Taking off-design conditions
into account allows the design of an efficient turbine to be used
(b) not only at the design head and flow rate but also at different
head and flow rates compatible with the seasonal changes.

Acknowledgment
This research is financially supported by Turkish Ministry
of Development. Computations are performed using the com-
putational cluster of TOBB ETU Hydro Energy Research
Laboratory (ETU Hydro).

(c)
Fig. 15. Efficiencies of turbine parts changing with flow rate (For head
= 126.7 m): (a) Spiral case, stay vanes and guide vanes; (b) runner; (c)
draft tube.
Fig. 16. Hill chart for off-design conditions.
4. Discussion and conclusion
A 4.3 MW Francis turbine is designed. All components of
the turbine are designed separately using computational fluid
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Selin Aradag obtained her B.S. and
M.S. degrees from the Department of
Mechanical Engineering of Middle East
Technical University in 2000 and 2002,
respectively. She graduated from Rut-
gers, The State University of New Jer-
sey, USA in 2006 with a Ph.D. degree in
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering.
5049
After spending two years as a Research Engineer at US Air
Force Academy, Colorado Springs, USA, she joined the Fac-
ulty of TOBB University of Economics and Technology, De-
partment of Mechanical Engineering in 2008. She is the re-
cipient of Turkish Academy of Sciences Distinguished Young
Scientist Award in 2010. She is a senior member of American
Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and served
at the Fluid Dynamics Technical Committee of AIAA from
2006 to 2010. She is currently the Director of of TOBB ETU
Hydro Energy Research Laboratory (ETU Hydro). Her areas
of expertise are Fluid Mechanics, Aerodynamics, Heat ex-
changers and Hydro energy.