Stability Limits of Reversible-Pump Turbines in Turbine Mode of Operation and Measurements of Unstable Characteristics

Abstract

Measurements have been performed on a reversible-pump turbine model installed in a closed loop conduit system. The characteristics of the unstable pump turbine in turbine mode show a hysteresis pattern. Hence the output of the system is dependent on the previous state of the flow and not only the input variables. The hysteresis pattern is a characteristic of the whole system, but is caused by the unstable pump turbine. The unstable part of the characteristics was measured by three different methods: 1) by transient sampling of data during the transition between operation modes, 2) by throttling valves that steepens the friction-loss curve, and 3) by switching the causality in the system such that the torque becomes an input parameter and the speed of rotation becomes an output parameter. In the valve throttling measurements a pressure dependency was seen for the characteristics at high nondimensional speeds. This was further investigated by additional measurements of the characteristics at three different pressure levels. A rigid-water-column stability analysis has been conducted. The classic H-Q criterion describes static stability for a pump turbine with constant speed of rotation. With the speed of rotation as a variable, there is a new static stability criterion in addition to the dynamic stability criterion.