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Effect of Blades Number on Undershot Waterwheel Performance with Variable

Inlet Velocity

Conference Paper · November 2018

DOI: 10.1109/ICSTC.2018.8528714

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 2018 4th International Conference on Science and Technology (ICST), Yogyakarta, Indonesia

Effect of Blades Number on Undershot Waterwheel

Performance with Variable Inlet Velocity
Satrio Adi Arifianto Budiarso
Warjito
Department of Mechanical Engineering Department of Mechanical Engineering
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Universitas Indonesia Universitas Indonesia
Universitas Indonesia
Depok, Indonesia Depok, Indonesia
Depok, Indonesia
asatrioadi@gmail.com budiarso@ui.ac.id
warjito@eng.ui.ac.id
Sanjaya BS Nasution
Dendy Adanta
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Department of Mechanical Engineering
Universitas Indonesia
Universitas Indonesia
Depok, Indonesia
Depok, Indonesia
sanjayabaroarnasution@gmail.com
dendyadanta@ymail.com

Abstract—The undershot waterwheel is recommended to
increase electrification ratio in remote areas of Indonesia due to its
simple shape, which results in higher efficiency under low head
conditions than other turbines. Using analytic and numerical
methods, this study develops an equation to determine how many
blades should be used and examines the effects of the kinetic energy
of water on the energy conversion process to determine how the
undershot waterwheel should be classified. Analytical methods were
used to develop an equation to determine blades number, and
numerical methods were used to verify the new equation. Variable
inlet velocities of 1 m/s, 3 m/s, and 5 m/s and variations in blades
number of 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 blades were tested. From the analytical
results, the recommended blades number is 8. Based on the
numerical results, an 8-bladed waterwheel is most efficient with
variable inlet velocities of 1 m/s (45.58% efficiency) and 5 m/s
(13.84% efficiency). Analyzing the data using two-factor analysis of
variance (ANOVA) without replication, it was determined that
blades number effects output power, but inlet velocity does not.
Thus, the proposed equation for determining the ideal blades
number can be effectively used, but it still needs validation through
experimentation. Furthermore, the kinetic energy of water was not
found to have an effect on the energy conversion process in an
undershot waterwheel, therefore, the undershot waterwheel should
be classified as a reaction turbine.
Keywords—Pico hydro, undershot waterwheel, blade, reaction
turbine
I. INTRODUCTION
As of June 2017, Indonesia’s electrification ratio was
92.80%, indicating that approximately 7.20% of households are
not yet connected to the national electricity grid [1]. To
increase the electrification ratio, the government has pursued
renewable energy sources for independent power generation in
remote areas. Pico hydro has been considered by many
developing countries to generate electricity to remote areas due
to its lower life cycle cost, easier manufacturing in remote
areas, and lower investment and operation costs than solar
photovoltaic (PV) and wind turbines [2], [3]. In addition,
Indonesia has the hydro power potential of approximately 19
GW under low head conditions (less than 5 m) [4].
Pico hydro is a type of hydro power plant that generates
electricity with an output power below 5 kW. Based on turbine
application range graphs (also known as relations of head and
discharge graphs), the undershot waterwheel is recommended
because of its effectiveness while operating with low head [5].
In addition, due to its simple shape and developmental
improvements, the undershot waterwheel is an economical
turbine, and many communities are aware of this technology
[6], making it suitable for application in remote areas.
There have been numerous studies on the undershot
waterwheel to examine its performance. Denny’s [7] study
increased undershot waterwheel efficiency by using Poncelet’s
modification and geometric equations, leading to a new design
that analytically performed better than the conventional design.
Zulfikar, Siswoyo, and Utomo [8] presented the technical
specifications for waterwheels, providing parameters for
undershot waterwheel design. Sule, Wardana, Soenoko, and
Wahyudi [9] compared the effectiveness of blades number and
blade shape for an undershot waterwheel using an experimental
method. They concluded that the highest-performance model
was six blades in a tick shape. Nishi, Inagaki, Li, and Hatano
[10] studied cross-flow turbine blade shape (curvature shape)
and concluded through simulation that the straight blade is
more efficient than the curved blade. Rinaldi, Hendri, and
Junaidi [11] generated an equation of initial power using head
and flow of water. Jamlay, Sule, and Hasan [12] presented a
process for planning, designing, and installing a pico-hydro
power plant in a village using an undershot waterwheel as the
turbine. Yah, Sahat, and Oumer [13] analyzed the effect of
immersed blade depth on the performance of an undershot
waterwheel. They found that an immersed depth of 40 mm was
optimal compared to 20 mm, 60 mm, and 80 mm. Jamlay, Sule,
and Hasan [14] analyzed the flow behavior of the undershot
waterwheel and found which conditions have the most effect on
the its performance. Zengin, Aslan, Artnuc, Aktan, and Güney
[15] developed an equation to optimize the output power and
efficiency of a hydrokinetic energy generation system using an
undershot waterwheel as its turbine. The velocity calculation
used Betz’s law, which is usually used for wind energy
conversion systems. Dutta, Shrestha, Chaudhary, and Shrestha

Funding provided by the Directorate of Research and Service Community

(DRPM) Universitas Indonesia with grant No. 4749/UN2.R3.1/HKP/05/2018.

978-1-5386-5813-0/18/$31.00 ©2018 IEEE

 2018 4th International Conference on Science and Technology (ICST), Yogyakarta, Indonesia

[16] discovered that high density polyethylene (HDPE) offers Z= )

more resistance to water, is non-corrosive and non-decaying,
and is inexpensive.
Previous research has provided many methods to improve
the performance of the undershot waterwheel, such as
modification to the geometry of the blade or work concept,
process planning and design, use of suitable materials, etc.
Although the development and application of this technology
has taken many decades, determination of the appropriate
blades number is still based on assumption. This study
develops an equation to determine the most efficient blades
number and verifies it using numerical methods. In addition,
this study examines the effects of the kinetic energy of water on
the energy conversion process for an undershot waterwheel to
determine whether the undershot waterwheel should be
categorized as a reaction or mixture turbine. The numerical
method was chosen because it is cheaper and can clearly
describe the flow field, which cannot be done using other
methods [2]. Two-factor analysis of variance (ANOVA)
without replication was used to determine if there is a
relationship between the blades number and inlet velocity on
output power. Two-factor ANOVA without replication was
used because the blades number are known and inlet velocity
were controlled [17].
II. METHODOLOGY
Equations (5) and (6) were adapted from the Pelton turbine
design principle. This was needed to calculate the second blade
position right above the water surface and assumed that
maximum hydrostatic pressure was acting on the vertical blade.
The geometric relationship between (1) and (5) can be seen in
Fig. 1.
After the blade’s geometry was determined, further analysis
was conducted to calculate potential value of hydrostatic
pressure, rotation per minute (RPM), and output power for this
operation. Senior, Wiemann, and Müller [19] generated an
equation for hydrostatic pressure on a vertical blade, thus
leading to theoretical output power of the system.
As shown in Fig. 2, hydrostatic force (FR) acts along the
vertical blade. Where water depth upstream (d1), water depth
downstream (d2), and width of blade (W), gravity (g), and
water density (r). Therefore, hydrostatic force (FR) could be
calculated using [19]:
FR = g.( ) W ()
Then, RPM could be determined with inlet velocity (u) and
outer diameter (Do):

A. Analytical Method RPM = ()

The analytical method was used to determine the
dimensions of the undershot waterwheel. Nasution [18] created To achieve maximum efficiency, peripheral velocity (v) of
an equation to determine the value of an undershot the blade was calculated as half of the inlet velocity (u) [20]:
waterwheel’s blade height (h):
u = ()
h = ()
Output power (Pout) was then calculated using:
Equation (1) could be reversely used to determine the outer
diameter (Do) if h is known. For this study, h was assumed to Pout = (g.( ) W).u ()
have an equal value to water depth height (d) in a channel,
therefore:

h=d ()

After the blade height (h) and outer diameter (Do) were
calculated, the following calculation was used to determine the
inner diameter (Di):

Di = Do – 2h ()

The angular distance between blades () was calculated

using:

= ()
Fig. 1. Design parameter for analytic calculation.
Then, the blades number (Z) proportional to the undershot
waterwheel’s dimensions could be determined:
 2018 4th International Conference on Science and Technology (ICST), Yogyakarta, Indonesia

with the movement of the blade domain occurring from

interaction with the fluid. Furthermore, there were 3 variations
in the inlet velocity for each simulation: 1 m/s, 3 m/s, and 5
m/s. This was to determine the relationship between blade
number to output power with variable inlet velocity
conditions. Thus, 15 simulations were conducted in this study
to answer the research objective.

III. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

Fig. 2. Hydrostatic pressure acting on a vertical blade. A. Analytical Results

Because geometric dimension is related to the experimental
This study assumed the water depth height (d) is equal to site, Table 1 shows the results of (1) to (9) with experimental
water depth upstream (d1) when the waterwheel is placed in the site conditions of 0.041 m3/s for discharge, water depth height
channel (d = d1) and the water depth downstream (d2) is equal a (d) of 0.164 m, and width of blade (W) of 0.25 m. Thus, the
half of water depth upstream (d1) or d2 = 0.5d1. power potential was calculated at 20.5 W with the inlet velocity
(u) of 1 m/s. Due to variable inlet velocity, the power potential
B. Numerical Method also varied. For inlet velocity (u) of 3 m/s, the potential power
The simulation of the undershot waterwheel was conducted was 184.5 W and for u of 5 m/s, the potential power was 512.5
using Ansys-FLUENT 18.2. First, the geometry is prepared in W. The geometric dimensions obtained from the analytical
each blades number are about 6, 7, 8, 9, and 10 and created results are illustrated in Fig. 4.
with an outer diameter (Do) of 984 mm and width of blade (W)
of 250 mm, as determined from the analytical results. To save TABLE I. GEOMETRIC SPECIFICATIONS
computing power, all equations were simplified to be two
dimensional (2D). Parameter Value
Outer Diameter (Do) 0.984 m
The next step was to determine turbulence model
independency, mesh, and time step. This step was performed to Inner Diameter (Di) 0.656 m
find the optimal setting that does not burden the computing Blade Width (W) 0.25 m
power. The independence test was used to analyze the force
probe value at 2 coordinates: 1,0,0 and 0,1,0. The turbulence Blades Number (Z) 8 blades
model independency was calculated using a five-variation Blade Height (h) 0.164 m
model, with variations to laminar, k-ε, RNG k-ε, k-ε scalable
wall function, and RNG k-ε scalable wall function. The RPM 19.42 rpm
turbulence model independence process was used to determine Power Potential 20.5 W
the setting: single phase and steady state conditions. For the
mesh independency, the ten series element numbers were set at Output Power (Pout) 12.4 W
a steady state and multiphase. The ten series element numbers
were 30,000, 50,000, 70,000, 90,000 and 100,000 elements.
Fig. 3 shows the mesh that was used in this study. Furthermore,
for time step independency, four differences in time step size
were set under multiphase and transient time.
Fig. 3. Sample of display mesh used in this study.

There were several boundary conditions for this

simulation: volume of fluid (VoF) setting was enabled because
there were two fluid phases, water and air, with a constant
surface tension of 0.0728 N/m between these fluids. In
addition, dynamic mesh setting was also enabled to activate Fig. 4. Geometric assembly based on analytical results.
the six degrees of freedom (6-DOF) feature. This feature
makes it possible to investigate fluid dynamics phenomena
 2018 4th International Conference on Science and Technology (ICST), Yogyakarta, Indonesia

B. Numerical Results
The turbulence model independency was calculated to find
out which model was the best fit to represent the fluid pattern.
As shown in Fig. 5, the standard k-ε with scalable wall
functions model was almost precise because the result was not
very different from RNG k-ε with scalable wall functions, with
a difference 11.12%. In addition, standard k-ε was not used
because the study by Nishi, Inagaki, Li, and Hatano [10], which
adopted standard k-ε, showed a relatively high error value.
Thus, standard k-ε with scalable wall functions model was
chosen in this study because it enables solutions on arbitrarily
fine near-wall grids, which is a significant improvement over
standard wall functions.
Mesh independency and time step independency were
calculated to verify the number of element mesh and the
number of time steps. Based on the study by Wang et al. [21], Fig. 6. Mesh independency results.
simulations using coarse meshes and large time steps were
inaccurate predictions of mass, momentum, and energy
transfer. Fig. 6 shows that this study used a mesh with
approximately 90,000 elements because it was not significantly
different from a mesh with 100,000 elements. Fig. 7 shows that
the time step size of 0.001 s or 1000 Hz was chosen because it
had an error of 21.39% when compared with 10,000 Hz, which
was lower than others.
Fig. 8 shows the comparison between inlet velocity (u) of 1
m/s, 3 m/s, and 5 m/s with 5 variations in blades number. From
the obtained results, the undershot waterwheel with 8 blades
became the most efficient waterwheel at inlet velocity of 1 m/s
and 5 m/s in compared to any other blades number, with an
efficiency of 45.58% for 1 m/s and 13.84% for 5 m/s.
Efficiency reduction at inlet velocity of 5 m/s is expected
happen because the different of water depth on both sides of the
blade (upstream and downstream) is not significant compare to
inlet velocity of 1 m/s (see Fig. 9 and 10). Thus, the equation is Fig. 7. Time step independency results.
effective for determining the blades number that should be
used. However, it still needs to be tested experimentally.

Fig. 5. Turbulence model independency results. Fig. 8. Efficiency by blades number at various velocities.
 2018 4th International Conference on Science and Technology (ICST), Yogyakarta, Indonesia

However, while the potential energy of water is great, it has a

low velocity and low kinetic energy. This condition inspired
Poncelet and Zuppinger to develop an undershot waterwheel
that could utilize the potential energy from water without being
affected by its kinetic energy [22].

TABLE II. ANALYSIS REPORT FROM TWO-FACTOR ANOVA WITHOUT

REPLICATION
Source of P-
SS df MS F F crit
Variation value
1.74E
Rowsa 5628.95 2 2814.48 106.1 3.11
-06
b
Columns 102.26 4 25.56 0.96 0.48 2.81

Error 212.26 8 26.53

Fig. 9. Water volume fraction of 8-bladed waterwheel with inlet velocity of
1 (m/s). Total 5943.47 14
a. .
Rows is denoted as blades number or treatment.
b. .
Columns is denoted as inlet velocity or block.

Fig. 10. Water volume fraction of 8-bladed waterwheel with inlet velocity of 5
(m/s).
C. Discussion
This investigation was conducted to determine the
relationship between variable inlet velocity (u) and output
power (Pout) as well as variations in blades number (Z) and
output power (Pout). Two-factor ANOVA without replication
was chosen to determine this statistical relationship.
Table 2 is the summary report for the results from the two-
factor ANOVA without replication with 90% level of
probability. F > Fcrit for the blades number (Z) means that the
blades number effects output power. Besides, F < Fcrit for the
inlet velocity (u) means kinetic energy has no effect on the
energy conversion process for an undershot waterwheel.
Because the kinetic energy of water has no effect on the energy
conversion process of an undershot waterwheel, this means that
this waterwheel should be classified as a reaction turbine. In
addition, paired with Fig. 2, Fig. 9 and 10 shows occurrence of
depth differentiation between water depth upstream (d1) and
water depth downstream (d2) as point in Fig. 2. This indicate
the energy received by the active blades is a hydrostatic force.
Thus, the occurrence verifies the assumption in Fig. 2, which d2
= 0.5d1. This study had similar results to a study conducted by
Müller [22]. He reported that initially the undershot waterwheel
worked like an impulse turbine (utilizing kinetic energy).
IV. CONCLUSION
From this study, the proposed equation for determining the
appropriate blades number on an undershot waterwheel (Z) is
effective but still needs validation through experimentation.
This is based on simulation results using 8 blades and inlet
velocity (u) of 1 m/s producing 45.58% efficiency and 5 m/s
producing 13.84% efficiency, which were higher efficiencies
than other variations (blades number of 6, 7, 9, and 10 and u =
3 m/s). Analysis from two-factor ANOVA without replication
showed that there is a relationship between blades number and
output power but not between inlet velocity and output power.
Thus, the kinetic energy of water has no effect on the energy
conversion process for an undershot waterwheel, meaning that
it should be classified as a reaction turbine.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
Funding provided by the Directorate of Research and
Service Community (DRPM) Universitas Indonesia with grant
No. 4749/UN2.R3.1/HKP/05/2018.
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