Experimental investigations of the swirling flow in the conical diffuser using flow-feedback control technique with additional energy source

The previous experimental and numerical investigations of decelerated swirling flows in conical diffusers have demonstrated that water injection along to the axis mitigates the pressure fluctuations associated to the precessing vortex rope [1]. However, for swirling flows similar to Francis turbines operated at partial discharge, the water jet becomes effective when the jet discharge is larger than 10% from the turbine discharge, leading to large volumetric losses when the jet is supplied from upstream the runner. As a result, it was introduced a new approach for supplying the jet by using a fraction of the discharge collected downstream the conical diffuser [2]. This is called flow-feedback control technique (FFCT) and it was investigated experimentally in order to assess its capability [3]. The FFCT approach not requires additional energy to supply the jet. Consequently, the turbine efficiency is not diminished due to the volumetric losses injected even if around 10% of the main flow is used. However, the equivalent amplitude of the pressure pulsations associated to the vortex rope decreases with 30% if 10% jet discharge is applied [3]. Using 12% water jet discharge from upstream then the equivalent amplitude of the pressure pulsations is mitigated with 70% according to Bosioc et al. [4]. In our case, an extra 2% jet discharge is required in order to obtain similar results with FFCT. This extra discharge is provided using an additional energy source. Therefore, the paper presents experimental investigation performed with FFCT with additional energy source. The experimental results obtained with this technique are compared against FFCT and the swirling flow with vortex rope, respectively.