A novel design of composite water turbine using CFD

This paper presents computational investigation of a novel design of composite material axial water turbine using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). Based on three-dimensional numerical flow analysis, the flow characteristics through the water turbine with nozzle, wheel and diffuser are predicted. The extract power and torque of a composite water turbine at different rotating speeds were calculated and analyzed for a specific flow speed. The simulation results show that using nozzle and diffuser can increase the pressure drop across the turbine and extract more power from available water energy. These results provide a fundamental understanding of the composite water turbine, and this design and analysis method is used in the design process.