Numerical Assessment of Pulsating Water Jet in the Conical Diffusers

The hydraulic fluctuations associated with partial load operating conditions of Francis turbines are often periodic and characterized by the presence of a vortex rope. Two types of pressure fluctuations associated with the draft tube surge are identified in the literature. The first is an asynchronous (rotating) pressure fluctuation due to the precession of the helical vortex around the axis of the draft tube. The second type of fluctuation is a synchronous (plunging) fluctuation. The plunging fluctuations correspond to the flow field oscillations in the whole hydraulic passage, and are generally propagated overall in the hydraulic system. The paper introduced a new control method, which consists in injecting a pulsating axial water jet along to the draft tube axis. Nevertheless, the great calling of this control method is to mitigate the vortex rope effects targeting the vortex sheet and corresponding plunging component. In this paper, is presented our 3D numerical investigations with and without pulsating axial water jet control method in order to evaluate the concept.