A case study of the fluid structure interaction of a Francis turbine

The Francis turbine runners of the Grimsel 2 pump storage power plant showed repeatedly cracks during the last decade. It is assumed that these cracks were caused by flow induced forces acting on blades and eventual resonant runner vibrations lead to high stresses in the blade root areas. The eigenfrequencies of the runner were simulated in water using acoustic elements and compared to experimental data. Unsteady blades pressure distribution determined by a transient CFD simulation of the turbine were coupled to a FEM simulation. The FEM simulation enabled analyzing the stresses in the runner and the eigenmodes of the runner vibrations. For a part-load operating point, transient CFD simulations of the entire turbine, including the spiral case, the runner and the draft tube were carried out. The most significant loads on the turbine runner resulted from the centrifugal forces and the fluid forces. Such forces effect temporally invariant runner blades loads, in contrast rotor stator interaction or draft tube instabilities induce pressure fluctuations which cause the temporally variable forces. The blades pressure distribution resulting from the flow simulation was coupled by unidirectional-harmonic FEM simulation. The dominant transient blade pressure distribution of the CFD simulation were Fourier transformed, and the static and harmonic portion assigned to the blade surfaces in the FEM model. The evaluation of the FEM simulation showed that the simulated part load operating point do not cause critical stress peaks in the crack zones. The pressure amplitudes and frequencies are very small and interact only locally with the runner blades. As the frequencies are far below the modal frequencies of the turbine runner, resonant vibrations obviously are not excited.