Experimental Determination of Cavitation Characteristics of Hydraulic Turbines

Abstract

A new facility for the design, manufacturing and standardized tests of model hydraulic turbines is under construction at TOBB University of Economics and Technology. The facility is one of a few of its kind, in the sense that, it involves the whole process of hydraulic turbine design, including computational fluid dynamics (CFD) aided hydraulic and mechanical design, manufacturing and standardized performance tests. This work summarizes the capabilities of the "Center for Hydro Energy Research (ETU Hydro)" at the university and focuses on the cavitation tests of the model turbines. The cavitation characteristics of the turbines are determined with the help of several tests that meet the required standards, the details of which are given in this paper.