Application of Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Method for the Analysis of the Flow Past Vertical Vortex Turbine of a Micro Hydropower.

The Weakly Compressible Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (WCSPH) has been applied to simulate the flow through a Gravitational Vertical Turbine (GVT) configuration and the motion of the turbine of a small hydropower system. The turbine blades are assumed to be rigid bodies moving with one-degree of freedom, which is the rotation about its shaft due the hydrodynamic forces of the flow. The intake flow is an open channel flow which falls into a cylindrical basin which houses the turbine and impinges on the turbine blades. The method of simulation is the Weakly Compressible Smoothed Hydrodynamics (WCSPH) with the turbulence models in the equations of motion and the boundary conditions. The results are compared with a laboratory experiments conducted for the same dimension and the configuration. The flow features agree well and the motion of the turbine with a representative mass and a load agrees reasonably with the laboratory experiments [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]