Estudio numérico de un rodete de turbina Pelton mediante elementos finitos para determinar su forma estructural y su comportamiento dinámico.

Abstract

This document is about the numerical study of a Pelton turbine runner for the "Illuchi N°2" hydroelectric power station using finite elements, in order to determine its structural and dynamic behavior using the finite element method. It is proposed to use a high-resistance polymeric resin as material for the impeller and design the buckets from a cloud of points obtained by a 3D scan. A CFD (computational fluid dynamics) analysis was performed to model and simulate the impact of the water jet on the runner buckets. This analysis provided data on the forces and pressures generated by the water. The results obtained from the CFD analysis were imported to carry out an FSI (fluid-structure interaction) analysis, where it was studied how the impact of water affects the structure of the runner. This analysis made it possible to determine the optimum thickness of the impeller to guarantee its resistance and stability under operating conditions. Finally, a modal analysis was applied out to evaluate the rotor dynamics. This analysis analyzes the natural vibration frequencies of the runner and corroborated that resonance will not occur during its operation.