Determination of turbine runner dynamic behaviour under operating condition by a two-way staggered fluid-structureinteraction method

This paper presents the application of the two-way fluid-structure interaction method introduced by ANSYS to calculate the dynamic behaviour of a Francis turbine runner under operating condition. This time-dependant calculation directly takes into account characteristics of the flow and particularly the pressure fluctuations caused by the rotor-stator interaction. This formulation allows the calculation of the damping forces of the whole system implicitly. Thereafter, the calculated dynamic stress can be used for a fatigue analysis. A verification of the mechanical and fluid simulations used as input for the fluid-structure interaction calculation is first performed. Subsequently, a connection of these two independent simulations is made. A validation according to the hydraulic conditions is made with the measurements from the scale model testing. Afterwards, the static displacement of the runner under the hydraulic load is compared with the results of a classical static analysis for verification purposes. Finally, the natural frequencies deduced by the post-processing of the dynamic portion of the runner displacement with respect to time are compared with the natural frequencies obtained from a classical acoustic modal analysis. All comparisons show a good agreement with experimental data or results obtained with conventional methods.