Cavitation Characteristics of S-Blade Used in Fully Reversible Pump-Turbine

S-shaped blade profiles with double camber find use in fully reversible turbomachines that can extract power from tides. Though noncavitating characteristics of S-blades were determined in the past, yet characterizing cavitating flow was not carried out. This work, which is the first step in this direction, uses a two-pronged approach of experimental and numerical characterization of cavitating flow past these hydrofoils. Experimental results indicate that as the angle of attack increases in either positive or negative directions, cavitation inception number increases. Minimum cavitation effect is observed at 2 deg, which is zero lift angle of attack. For higher angles of attack (+/- 6 deg, +/- 4 deg) and moderate or low cavitation number (sigma/sigma(i) <= 0.3), unsteady cloud cavitation was characterized through visual observation and from pressure fluctuation data. It was observed that for unsteady cavity shedding to take place is the length and thickness of the cavity should be more than 50% and 10% of the chord length, respectively. Predicting flow past this geometry is difficult and the problem may be compounded in many applications because of laminar-to-turbulence transition as well as due to the presence of cavitation. Present simulations indicate that the k - k(L) - omega transition model may be useful in predicting hydrodynamic performance of this type of geometry and for the range of Reynolds number considered in this paper. Hydrodynamic performance under cavitation indicates that pumping mode is more adversely affected by cavitation and, hence, a fully reversible turbomachine may not perform equally well in turbine and pump modes as expected from noncavitating results.