Grant: Collaborative Research and Development Grants

This project is part of the Consortium on Hydraulic Machines inaugurated in 2007 which aims at achieving a better understanding of the hydraulic behaviour of low-head turbines. The Consortium is based in Université Laval, and collaborators are leading companies involved in hydraulic turbine design or operation.The project, the Consortium's second, consists in measuring and numerically simulating the flow in a small-scale bulb turbine. The experimental measurements are performed in Université Laval's Hydraulic Machine Laboratory and numerical simulations are conducted by both industrial partners and by graduate students in collaboration with Université Laval's Numerical Fluid Mechanics laboratory. The two complementary approaches will improve understanding of unsteady phenomena in turbines. The quality of the numerical simulations used by the partners for design or analysis will be enhanced, which is an anticipated outcome of the project. This knowledge will lead to the design of bulb turbines with improved dynamic behaviour. Ultimately, utilities will benefit from more reliable turbines, reduced maintenance downtime, and increased machine life. All of these elements lead to the optimization of power generation by bulb turbines.