SCIENCE CHINA

Technological Sciences
• RESEARCH PAPER • May 2011 Vol.54 No.5: 1259–1266
doi: 10.1007/s11431-011-4295-2

Numerical investigation on the “S” characteristics of

a reduced pump turbine model
WANG LeQin1, YIN JunLian1, JIAO Lei1*, WU DaZhuan1 & QIN DaQing2
1
Institute of Chemical Machinery, Department of Chemical and Biological Engineering, Zhejiang University, Hangzhou 310027, China;
2
Harbin Institute of Large Electrical Machinery, Harbin 150001, China

Received October 16, 2010; accepted December 22, 2010; published online February 4, 2011

The performance of a reversible pump turbine with S-shaped characteristics is of great importance to the transition processes
such as start-up and load rejection. In order to predict the S-shaped curve accurately and develop a reliable tool for design im-
provement, a shear stress transport model (SST) with various numerical schemes for pressure term in the governing equation
was investigated in a whole pump turbine including spiral casing, stay vanes, guide vanes, runner and draft tube. Through the
computation, it was shown that different zones in the curve should employ different schemes to get the solution converged.
Comparison of discharge-speed performance showed that good correspondence is got between experimental data and CFD re-
sults. Based on this, internal flow analysis was carried out at three typical operating points representing turbine mode, shut-off
mode and reversible pump mode, respectively. According to the flow field concerned, the mechanism for the speed-no-load in-
stability was explained, which provides good guidelines to take countermeasures in future design.

pump turbine, flow simulation, SST k- turbulence mode, S-shaped curve

Citation: Wang L Q, Yin J L, Jiao L, et al. Numerical investigation on the “S” characteristics of a reduced pump turbine model. Sci China Tech Sci, 2011, 54:
12591266, doi: 10.1007/s11431-011-4295-2

1 Introduction

Pump storage power plants are key components for the de-
velopment of renewable CO2-free primary energies and the
security enhancement of electricity supply. Moreover, pump
turbine is the most important component in the whole power
station, which has a great influence on the AC grid. Since
the design of a pump turbine is a compromise between an
optimal pump and an optimal turbine, the turbine perform-
ance is always showing significantly steeper flow charac-
teristics than the conventional high head Francis turbines
with the same specific speed in name of S-shaped profile for
Q11 vs. N11 (Figure 1). For example, water hammer can be
severely increased due to the rapid change of flow rate as

Figure 1 Four quadrant characteristics of the pump turbine model.

*Corresponding author (email: hj_wlq4@zju.edu.cn)

© Science China Press and Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2011 tech.scichina.com www.springerlink.com
1260 Wang L Q, et al. Sci China Tech Sci May (2011) Vol.54 No.5

the turbine approaches the runaway speed. This causes se- main enables to overcome the influence of boundary con-
vere problems for frequency governing especially at idle ditions, periodic interfaces, and pitch ratio of rotor-stator
speed. The phenomenon has been handled in several previ- interface, and it especially considers the non-axisymmetric
ous studies [1–3]. Experimental studies have been carried inflow from the spiral casing. The specific parameters are
out [4] to measure the flow characteristics using PIV and listed in Table 1. The specific speed is defined as follows:
image processing technology. Based on his analysis on the
instability relationship between the external characteristics nP
ns  , (1)
and the internal flow, it was concluded that the instability H5 4
can be ascribed to the large scale vortex structure at the where ns is the specific speed, n is the rotating speed, P is
leading edge of the runner vanes. Moreover, the onset and the power output, and H is the head.
development of flow instability was also studied [5]. The
detailed pressure fluctuations between wickets were meas-
ured in the S-shaped zone and they concluded that the flow 3 Numerical aspects and computational details
blockage may result from rotating stall in runner channels.
The reasons for the formation of S-shaped curve explained 3.1 Grid generation
by Pettersen et al. [6] theoretically can be one or more of the
Structured grid is used for the whole domain, which is di-
following aspects: 1) Large ratio of diameter; 2) heavy for-
vided into four parts: spiral casing, vanes (stay vanes and
ward inclined vane; 3) the design of leading edge in turbine
guide vanes), runner and draft tube. All the parts are con-
mode. However, the instability phenomenon has still been a
nected to each other by fluid to fluid interfaces. Mesh re-
big problem in engineering practice. In order to solve the
finement is performed at the interfaces so that information
problem thoroughly, we must rely on the improvement in
upstream and downstream can be transferred more accu-
the design phase. Hence, a reliable numerical simulation
method is very necessary. rately. In order to capture the boundary flow separation,
special attention is paid to the boundary refinement of guide
Although traditional flow simulation based on k- turbu-
vanes, stay vanes and runner. The requirement of y+ for the
lence model is the state of the art to turbomachinery [7–10],
maximum flow rate case must be controlled to be less than
it still can not predict the flow on off-design conditions like
1. A vertical view of the whole grid is shown in Figure 3
the S-shaped zones. For example, Bjarne et al. [11] pre-
and the enlarged grid for the runner zone is depicted in
dicted the turbine characteristics of a reversible pump tur-
Figure 4. The mesh characteristics for each component will
bine, however, the accuracy was not so good near the run-
be summarized in the following section. The whole mesh
away point. The difficulty in the prediction of off-design
generation process is carried out with the help of the
conditions is due to the flow complexity such as the massive
commercial software ICEMCFD.
flow separations caused by large incident angle and the de-
tached, reattached boundary layer flow and rotating stall as
well. Besides, the flow variable’s gradient can be so large
that the common algorithms are not so suitable. Therefore,
more advanced turbulence model and algorithm should be
explored to solve this kind of flow.
Consequently, this paper focuses on the flow prediction
method and flow analysis in the S-shaped zone. The struc-
ture of the paper is arranged as follows: Detailed specifica-
tions of the pump turbine is introduced in section 2. Section
3 describes the CFD model, disposal of boundary condition
and numerical procedures. Section 4 presents the results
together with post-processing approaches and discussions.
Predicted results of discharge-speed characteristics curve Figure 2 Configuration of pump turbine studied.
were validated by experimental data and detailed internal
flows of three typical points were exhibited. At last, conclu-
Table 1 Main characteristics of the tested pump turbine(turbine mode)
sions are made.
Runner dia. At inlet (mm) 422
Runner dia. At outlet (mm) 300
2 Pump turbine specifications Runner blade number 9
Guide vane number 20
The whole configuration including spiral casing, stay vanes, Stay vane number 20
Specific speed (m kW) 189
guide vanes, runner and draft tube is considered in the
Guide vane opening (°) 20
physical model, as shown in Figure 2. The computing do-
 Wang L Q, et al.
Figure 3 Mesh generation with different parts identified by different
colours.
Figure 4 Grid for runner domain(H/J/L/C topology applied to blade).
3.2 Turbulence model chosen
The turbulence model is a key issue in CFD. Among all the
models used in the RANS mode, the k- based shear stress
transport (SST) model was designed to give highly accurate
predictions of the onset and the amount of flow separation
[12] under adverse pressure gradients by the inclusion of
transport effects into the formulation of the eddy-viscosity.
The model has already been applied to many flow separat-
ing problems [13] and is employed in this paper.
The closure mode of SST k- is listed as follows：
     
     ui        G  Y  D , (2)
t xi xi  xi 
    k 
  k     kui     k   G k  Yk ,
t xi xi  xi 
where G k represents the generation of turbulence kinetic
energy due to mean velocity gradients, G represents the
generation of , k and  represent the effective diffusivity
of k and , respectively. Yk and Y represent the dissipation
of k and  due to turbulence, D represents the cross- diffu-
sion term.
Sci China Tech Sci May (2011) Vol.54 No.5 1261
3.3 Boundary condition
1) Inlet condition. The velocity inlet at the spiral casing
(turbine regime) or draft tube (reversible pump) is used,
whose profile is assumed to be uniform and determined by
experiment. The total pressure is specified at the inlet
boundary, and thus, the static pressure can be decided in the
initialization. The turbulence parameters are specified in
terms of turbulence intensity and hydraulic diameter of the
inlet.
2) Outlet conditions. Pressure outlet is used at the draft
tube (turbine regime) or spiral casing (reversible pump),
static pressure (p=0 Pa) is specified for all cases since the
objective is to study the energy characteristic without
consideration of cavitation .
3) Other conditions. No-slip condition is assumed on all
the solid walls, and standard wall function is used to calcu-
late the turbulence kinetic energy and turbulence dispassion
frequency near the wall. The rotation of runner domain is
dealt with by means of multiple rotating reference frame
(MRF) method [14].
3.4 Solution strategy
The software FLUENT was used to carry out the numerical
simulation. In the caculation, the second order upwind
scheme was used for discretization of convective term and
the second order central scheme for discretization of diffu-
sion term. The separated solver was used. Numerical con-
vergence was set to a maximum of 103. The current guide
vane opening referring to 70% load with obvious S charac-
teristics was used. For the curve concerned, thirty four op-
erating points were computed. The first calculation was
performed close to the best efficiency point. For each new
operating point the result from the previous calculation was
used as the initial solution. Since the mass flow is specified
at the inlet, and static pressure at the outlet, the actual head
over the computational domain is part of the solution.
4 Results and discussion
4.1 Grid independence study
In order to validate the independence of the grid, six sets of
mesh with different number cells in different parts were
tested on the basis of head. Runaway point was chosen as
(3) the objective since the flow under this condition is expected
to be the most complex and the most typical. Summaries of
each component are listed in Table 2 and the head variation
with the change of cell number is shown in Figure 5, which
demonstrates that the head will be gradually approaching
the experimental results as the cell number increases. Con-
sidering the compromise between numerical accuracy and
computational cost, the 5th mesh system was employed in
the following simulations.
1262 Wang L Q, et al. Sci China Tech Sci May (2011) Vol.54 No.5

Table 2 Sets of different grids in grid convergence study

Casing Vanes Runner Draft tube Total cell number

1 488540 603567 407418 388455 1887980
2 505726 846524 605634 388455 2346339
3 807665 1054358 712387 434276 3008686
4 905726 1205726 868841 588455 3568748
5 1164399 1300048 955079 640126 4059652
6 1408767 1587867 1287654 865554 5149842

reference turbine with 1 meter diameter operating at a head

of 1 meter. The unit speed is defined as
nD1
N11  , (4)
H
where n is the rotating speed in rpm, D1 is the reference
diameter (typically the outlet diameter for turbine condition),
H is the net head across the pump turbine. The unit flow is
defined as
Q
Q11  2
, (5)
D
1 H
where Q is the volumetric flow rate.
Figure 5 Grid convergence study based on the head. The unit torque used in the above section is defined as
M
M 11  , (6)
4.2 Pressure interpolation schemes D 3
H
1

As most points on the S-shaped curve are under off-design where M is the torque in the axial direction.
conditions, large pressure and velocity gradient will exist in Using unit parameters to scale the values to a unit head
the flow field. In this sense, the numerical treatment of [11] can simplify the comparison between experimental and
pressure term in the momentum equation is important and computational results. As can be seen in Figure 6, the
has a great influence on the convergence of the solution.
There are several different schemes to compute the face
pressure between adjacent cells, such as standard scheme, Table 3 Effects of pressure interpolation schemes on numerical conver-
gence
the linear or second-order scheme, and the pressure stag-
gering option (PRESTO). To find the most suitable schemes Brake Reversible pump
Case Turbine
condition condition
for different operating conditions in the S-shaped curve, the
Case 1 Standard Y Y N
above-mentioned three schemes were tested separately to Case 2 Second order Y Y N
get a convergent solution. In convenience, the S curve is Case 3 Presto N N Y
divided into three parts by the limitations M11=0 and Q11=0,
which are called turbine condition, brake condition and
reversible pump condition, respectively. The numerical
results are listed in Table 3, which indicates that both stan-
dard and second-order schemes can get the converged solu-
tion and only PRESTO is effective for the reversible pump
condition. Compared with the standard scheme, the sec-
ond-order scheme can reach the converged solution more
quickly. In summary, the second-order scheme is applied to
turbine and brake conditions while PRESTO in reversible
pump condition.

4.3 External discharge-speed characteristics analysis

To compare computed and experimental results, it is useful Figure 6 Comparision of S-shaped curve between model test and CFD
to introduce some unit variables i.e. values scaled to a results (normalized with repect to the best efficient point).
 Wang L Q, et al. Sci China Tech Sci May (2011) Vol.54 No.5 1263

correspondence is reasonable in the whole range, with only

small discrepancies at lower speed, where the head is over-
estimated.

4.4 Internal flow analysis

Because of the S characteristics, the instable phenomenon

such as speed-no-load instability will occur at the start-up
process in turbine mode and load rejection [15, 16], and the
operating point can’t be maintained but switches between
turbine condition and reversible pump condition on and off.
This kind of instability is very typical and serious in Tian-
huangping pump storaged power plant in China. Thus, three
operating points were chosen as key objectives to do the
analysis of internal flow, which are located in turbine con-
dition near the optimal efficient point marked by A (N11=
0.806, Q11=0.98), runaway condition marked by B (N11=
1.20, Q11=0.39) and reversible pump condition marked by C Figure 8 Relative velocity vectors on S2 stream surface (A).
(N11=1.35, Q11=0.37), respectively.

4.4.1 Flow analysis at A

The relative velocity vectors on the S1 stream surface, S2
stream surface and meridional surface are illustrated in Fig-
ures 7, 8 and 9. And the pressure distribution is depicted in
Figure 10. As a whole, the flow in runner channels is just as
the same as what to be expected in the design phase and no
flow separation occurs and pressure contours are very regu-
lar. Due to a little departure from the optimal efficient point,
a small swirling velocity component can be seen in the me-
ridional plane, which has no influence on the operating in-
stability.

4.4.2 Flow analysis at B

Similarly, the relative velocity vectors on the S1 stream
surface, S2 stream surface and meridional surface are
Figure 9 Relative velocity vectors on meridinal surface (A).

Figure 7 Relative velocity vectors on S1 stream surface (A). Figure 10 Total pressure contours on S1stream surface (A).
1264 Wang L Q, et al. Sci China Tech Sci May (2011) Vol.54 No.5

shown in Figures 11, 12 and 13. Great changes can be seen

in the flow field. Obviously detached vortexes on the pres-
sure side of the blade near the crown are observed, which
are induced by the large incident angle at the leading edge..
Actually, this kind of vortex flow has already been captured
in a similar specific pump turbine [4]. An amplificatory
comparison between experiment and numerical simulation
is shown in Figures 14 and 15. It can be seen that the rotat-
ing direction is opposite to that of the runner. The vortex
leads to severe blockage to the channel and it may be the
very reason why huge pressure fluctuations appear under
this operating condition [5]. It was also found that the vor-
tex was also rotating at a frequency which was lower than
the rotation frequency of the runner. In fact, the phenome-
non can be called rotating stall [17, 18], whose dynamic
characteristics is very important but out of the scope of this
paper. Thus, the frequency governing difficulty at idle speed
can be explained in the way that the evolvement of the vor-
tex can make the hydraulic load on the runner oscillate so Figure 12 Relative velocity vectors on S2 stream surface (B).
heavily that the operating point can jump into reversible
pump regime easily. This can also be found from Figure 16
showing positive radial velocity components in the vaneless
space between the runner and the guide vanes. Also, the
deteriorated flow is also reflected on the chaotic pressure
distribution in Figures 17 and 18. The increasing tendency
of total pressure near the inlet indicates that the pumping
effect is very strong. Hence, the internal mechanism for
S-shaped curve is just due to the blockage effect of the
above vortex flow, which can be taken as a clear guideline
for the future improvement.

4.4.3 Flow analysis at C

The relative velocity vectors on the S1 stream surface, S2
stream surface and meridional surface are shown in Fig-
ures 19, 20 and 21. Under this condition, massive flow

Figure 13 Relative velocity vectors on meridinal surface (B).

Figure 11 Relative velocity vectors on S1 stream surface (B).

Figure 14 Flow visualization in runner channels [4].
 Wang L Q, et al. Sci China Tech Sci May (2011) Vol.54 No.5 1265

Figure 18 Total pressure distribution normalized with respect to gH on

Figure 15 Vortex flow in runner channels captured in CFD. runner blades.

Figure 16 Flow discription in vaneless space between runner and vanes. Figure 19 Relative velocity vectors on S1 stream surface (C).

Figure 17 Pressure contours on S1 stream surface (B). Figure 20 Relative velocity vectors on S2 stream surface (C).
1266 Wang L Q, et al.
separation is dominant in the whole runner domain. Figure 18
shows that the flow begins to detach near the leading edge on
suction side of runner blades and then does not get retached
until the trailing edge. which can also be seen from pressure
distribution in Figure 22. The disordered flow is unsteady in
itself and can cause large pressure fluctuations which may
lead to mechanical failure. Therefore, in an engineering sense,
this operating point should be avoided as far as possible.
5 Conclusions
In the present investigation, the shear stress transport (SST)
turbulence model with suitable numerical schemes is used
to predict the S-shaped performance curve of a pump tur-
bine model. Special treatment for pressure term in the gov-
erning equation should depend on the specific flow regimes
along the curve. According to the numerical test results, it is
concluded that the second-order scheme is the most effec-
tive for turbine mode and shut-off mode whereas PRESTO
Figure 21 Relative velocity vectors on meridinal surface (C).
Figure 22 Total pressure contours on S1 stream surface (C).
Sci China Tech Sci May (2011) Vol.54 No.5
is suitable to the reversible pump mode. And the numerical
model in combination with the aforementioned numerical
schemes can be taken as a reliable tool for the future design
improvement to eliminate the steep curve. Through a de-
tail analysis of the internal flow field at three typical oper-
ating points, different flow structures are observed in the
runner zone. Especially, under runaway condition, it is the
dominant vortex located near the runner inlet that leads to
the speed-no-load instability. Despite the encouraging re-
sults, more work is still needed since the flows at off-design
conditions are unsteady inherently. Therefore, study should
focus on the dynamic characteristics of off-design condi-
tions in the future.
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of
China (Grant No. 50979095). We thank Professor Wu Yulin for his useful
advice and ideas for the current research and graduate Liu Jintao for his
help in CFD executions.
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