Abstract The hydro turbines need to be operated under different conditions to address the variations in power demand and inlet flow conditions. Cavitation is an issue in hydropower plants and it is more prominent in turbines at off-design plant operating conditions. In the present investigation, an effort has been made to conduct a simulation study in order to examine the performance and cavitation phenomenon of the Francis turbine at deep part load, part load, rated load and overload conditions using commercial CFX code by considering the SST turbulent model and Rayleigh-Plesset (R-P) equation. Investigation reveals that the turbine experiences a minimal decline in turbine efficiency observed at rated load condition, however the most significant decrease in efficiency occurs at overload operation. The cavitation characteristic of turbine has been determined by plotting the sigma curve under different load conditions. The result shows that the turbine operating near to critical cavitation number can handle different load conditions for cavitation-free operation. Further, the obtained results agree with the model test data for efficiency and locations of cavitating zones with earlier studies. The study can be useful to understand the cavitation impact under different plant operating conditions for the operators and manufacturers.
Kumar et al. (Fri,) studied this question.
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