More efforts are put on hydro-power to balance voltage and frequency within seconds for primary control in modem smart grids. This requires hydraulic turbines to run at off-design conditions, especially at low load or speed-no load. Besides, the tendency of increasing power output and decreasing weight of the turbine runners has also led to the high level vibration problem of the runners, especially high head Francis runners. Therefore, it is important to carry out the static and dynamic stress analyses of prototype high head Francis runners. This paper investigates the static and dynamic stresses on the prototype high head Francis runner based on site measurements and numerical simulations. The site measurements are performed with pressure transducers and strain gauges. Based on the measured results, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations for the flow channel from stay vane to draft tube cone are performed. Static pressure distributions and dynamic pressure pulsations caused by rotor-stator interaction (RSI) are obtained under various operating conditions. With the CFD results, static and dynamic stresses on the runner at different operating points are calculated by means of the finite element method (FEM). The agreement between simulation and measurement is analysed with linear regression method, which indicates that the numerical result agrees well with that of measurement. Furthermore, the maximum static and dynamic stresses on the runner blade are obtained at various operating points. The relations of the maximum stresses and the power output are discussed in detail. The influences of the boundary conditions on the structural behaviour of the runner are also discussed.
