Re-engineering of the Elements of Small Hydro Turbines

Abstract

Rehabilitation and modernization of existing hydro power plants and its elements is necessary to keep it concurrent on more and more demanding energy market. One of the challenges that enterprises are often met is lack of technical documentation of turbine elements. Modern approach to creation of technical documentation for elements of small hydro turbine has been presented. Geometry of penstock valve, guide vanes and draft tube influence on hydro aggregate efficiency. Beside the direct influence on efficiency, in this example the geometry of draft tube is in the same time an input parameter for selection of characteristics and geometry of new hydro turbine that should replace an existing one. The existing dimensional restrains should be respected. Geometry of turbines elements has been scanned using 3D scanner. As the result of scanning process, we obtained a point cloud that represent input data for further CAD software processing and creation of technical documentation as a final goal.