The effect of using upper shroud on the performance of a breashoot water wheel

Abstract

The cost-effective and ecologically acceptable exploitation of hydropower machine with small scale (low head and low flow rate) is still a challenging area. Breastshoot water wheel is one mode of the small scale hydropower machine that is common to use to generate power. The effect of using upper shroud on a breastshoot water wheel was evaluated. The research was done by examining two breastshoot water wheels with the outer diameter and hub diameter of 240 mm and 160mm respectively. Furthermore, the blade width is 40 mm. The wheel consist of 2 wheel which separated by 4mm thickness rim which the diameter the same as outer diameter of the outer wheel. Each side of the wheel consists of 12 blades. The experimental was done with two variations of wheel, i.e with upper shroud and without upper shroud. The torque was measured with prony brake method. The breastshoot wheel that was tested in this research is zuppinger water wheel type. The experimental result shows that the efficiency of the breastshoot water wheel with upper shroud is higher than water wheel without upper shroud in all speed range.