AUTOMATIC SHAPE OPTIMISATION OF HYDRO TURBINE COMPONENTS BASED ON CFD

Abstract

Since hydro turbines are designed individually according to the local situation, this requires a huge engineering effort. In order to reduce this effort, automatic optimisation tools are necessary. In this paper the shape optimisation of a turbine draft tube is shown. Different optimisation algorithms have been applied and will be discussed. From the used algorithms, the one based on approximated gradients seems to be the fastest.

Keywords

• mathematical optimisation
• flow simulation
• draft tube