Full 3-D viscous optimization design of a reversible pump turbine runner

Abstract

The bi-directional operation of reversible pump turbines presents a great challenge in terms of runner design. In the present paper, an optimal design system for the pump turbine runner is presented by coupling three-dimensional (3-D) inverse design with the Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), Design of Experiment (DoE), Response Surface Methodology (RSM) and Multi Objective Genetic Algorithm (MOGA). A pump-turbine runner was designed using the system, with selecting blade loading distributions and blade lean as the input parameters, and the runner efficiency for both pump and turbine mode as optimization objectives. The CFD results show that a high efficiency runner can be designed using the present system.