Parallel CFD simulations of an original and redesigned hydraulic turbine draft tube

The design of hydraulic turbine draft tubes has traditionally been based on simplified analytic methods, model and full-scale experiments. In the recent years the use of numerical methods such as computational fluid dynamics (CFD) has increased in the design process, due to the rapid escalation in computer performance. Today with parallel computer architectures, new aspects of flow can be considered. However, several problems have still to be solved before CFD can routinely be applied in product development. This paper aims to investigate the parallel performance of commercial CFD software on homogeneous computer networks, as common solutions encountered in the industry today. In addition, the efficiency improvements obtained in earlier experiments by modifying the shape of the draft tube will be considered, to deduce if the improvements can be captured with aid of CFD. Results from both the steady and the unsteady CFD simulations show that almost full scalability is obtained with the commercial CFD software CFX-5.7.1. Furthermore, no noticeable improvement in the pressure recovery factor or the flow field is noticed in the CFD simulations as compared to experiments. The discrepancy may be to the applied inlet boundary conditions and/or the turbulence model.