Numerical Investigations of Incompressible Turbomachinery Applications using OpenFOAM

Licentiate thesis, 2010

Swirling flow and unsteady phenomena are common in technical applications, such as turbines, pumps and compressors. The objective of this work is to get a good understanding of the turbulent flow features inside such applications, and to validate the computational techniques used for such applications. Because of the complexity of the turbulent flow, approximations are made when solving the flow equations in the computational domain. Depending on the level of the approximations, the level of accuracy and detail in the predicted flow will vary. To validate the assumptions used in the simulations and to get a good prediction of the flow, the computational technique as well as the CFD code must thus be validated against detailed measurements. The present work aims at getting a good understanding of the turbulent flow in the U9 Kaplan turbine model, using the OpenFOAM CFD code. Detailed measurements are used to validate the computed turbulent flow features.