A study on the design and performance analysis of pump-turbine system

The pump-turbine impeller is the key component of pumped storage power plant. Current design methods of pump-turbine impeller are private and protected from public viewing. Generally speaking, the design proceeds in two steps: the initial hydraulic design and optimization design to achieve a balanced performance between pump mode and turbine mode. In this study, the initial impeller blade design is derived by applying an inverse design method based on a 3D potential flow approach. In the 3D inverse design method, the blade shape is computed by a specified distribution of blade loading. The performance prediction by CFD analysis is carried out by considering the efficiency and internal flow at both modes.