Numerical investigation of the spear valve configuration on the performance of Pelton and Turgo turbine injectors and runners

This paper uses two modern commercial CFD software packages to compare the performance of a standard and improved impulse turbine injector developed in a previous study. The two injector designs are compared by simulating the two-dimensional (2D) axis-symmetric cases as well as full three-dimensional (3D) cases including the bend in the branch pipe and the guide vanes. The resulting jet profiles generated by these simulations are used to initialize the inlet conditions for a full Pelton and Turgo runner simulation at different operating conditions in order to assess the impact of the injector design on the performance and efficiency of a real impulse turbine. The results showed that the optimized injector design, with steeper nozzle and spear angles, not only attains higher efficiencies in the 2D and 3D injector simulations but also produces a jet which performs better than the standard design in both the Pelton and the Turgo runner simulations. The results show that the greatest improvement in the hydraulic efficiency occurs within the injector with the improved design, showing an increase in efficiency of 0.76% for the Turgo 3D injector and 0.44% for the Pelton 3D injector. The results also show that in the case of the 3D injector, the improved injector geometry produces a jet profile which induces better overall runner performance, giving a 0.5% increase in total hydraulic efficiency for the Pelton case and 0.7% for the Turgo case.