Rotating stall may occur at part load flow of a pump-turbine in pump mode. Unstable flow structures developing under stall condition can lead to a sudden drop of efficiency, high dynamic load and even cavitation. CFD simulations on a pump-turbine model in pump mode were carried out to reveal the onset and developed mechanisms of these unstable flow phenomena at part load. The simulation results of energy-discharge and efficiency characteristics are in good agreement with those obtained by experiments. The more deviate from design conditions with decreasing flow rate, the more flow separations within the vanes. Under specific conditions, four stationary separation zones begin to progress on the circumference, rotating at a fraction of the impeller rotation rate. Rotating stalls lead to the flow in the vane diffuser channels alternating between outward jet flow and blockage. Strong jets impact the spiral casing wall causing high pressure pulsations. Severe separations of the stall cells disturb the flow inducing periodical large amplitude pressure fluctuations, of which the intensity at different span wise of the guide vanes is different. The enforced rotating nonuniform pressure distributions on the circumference lead to dynamic uniform forces on the impeller and guide vanes. The results show that the CFD simulations are capable to gain the complicated flow structure information for analysing the unstable characteristics of the pump mode at part load.

According to the fact that the effects of penstock, unit and governor on stability of water level fluctuation for hydropower station with air cushion surge chamber are neglected in previous researches, in this paper, Thoma assumption is broken through, the complete mathematical model of waterpower-speed control system for hydropower station with air cushion surge chamber is established, and the comprehensive transfer function and linear homogeneous differential equation that characterize the dynamic characteristics of system are derived. The stability domain that characterizes the good or bad of stability quantitatively is drawn by using the stability conditions. The effects of the fluid inertia in water diversion system, the air cushion surge chamber parameters, hydraulic turbine characteristics, generator characteristics, and regulation modes of governor on the stability of waterpower-speed control system are analyzed through stability domain. The main conclusions are as follows: The fluid inertia in water diversion system and hydraulic turbine characteristics have unfavorable effects on the system while generator characteristics have favorable effect. The stability keeps getting better with the increase of chamber height and basal area and the decrease of air pressure and air polytropic exponent. The stability of power regulation mode is obviously better than that of frequency regulation mode.

The runaway process in a model pumped-storage system was simulated for analyzing the dynamic characteristics of a pump-turbine. The simulation was adopted by coupling 1D (One Dimensional) pipeline MOC (Method of Characteristics) equations with a 3D (Three Dimensional) pump-turbine CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) model, in which the water hammer wave in the 3D zone was defined by giving a pressure dependent density. We found from the results that the dynamic performances of the pump-turbine do not coincide with the static operating points, especially in the S-shaped characteristics region, where the dynamic trajectories follow ring-shaped curves. Specifically, the transient operating points with the same Q 11 and M 11 in different moving directions of the dynamic trajectories give different n 11 . The main reason of this phenomenon is that the transient flow patterns inside the pump-turbine are influenced by the ones in the previous time step, which leads to different flow patterns between the points with the same Q 11 and M 11 in different moving directions of the dynamic trajectories.

In allusion to the hydropower station with upstream and downstream surge chambers, a complete mathematical model of waterpower-speed control system that includes pipeline system and turbine regulation system is established under the premise of the breakthrough of Thoma assumption in this paper. The comprehensive transfer functions and free movement equations that characterize the dynamic characteristics of system are derived when the mode of governor is respectively frequency regulation and power regulation. Then according to Routh- Hurwitz theorem, the stability domain that describes the good or bad of stability is drawn in the coordinate system with the relative areas of upstream and downstream surge chambers as abscissa and ordinate respectively. Finally, the effects of Thoma assumption, flow inertia, regulation modes, and governor parameters on the stability of waterpower-speed control system are analyzed by means of stability domain. The following conclusions have been come to: Thoma assumption made the stability worse. The flow inertia T w has unfavorable effect on the stability of the two regulation modes. The stability of power regulation mode is obviously superior to frequency regulation mode under the same condition, but the parametric variation sensibility of the former is inferior to the latter. For the governor parameters, the stability continually gets better with the increase of temporary droop b t and damping device time constant T d , while the stability of frequency regulation would get worse with the increase of temporary droop b t when the damping device time constant T d takes small value. As the increase of permanent droop b p , the stability of power regulation mode gets worse.

High-head pumped storage power stations face serious problems related to the transient process, especially in the area of delayed load rejection in stations with annular piping layouts. The controlled pressures are adversely affected, which leads to many problems in the engineering design phase. In this study, we investigated this condition through theoretical analysis, numerical simulation, and actual engineering practice. We concluded that the root cause of the pressure issues is the flow switching resulted from the non-synchronous changes in pressure between each branch pipe. Moreover, we examined the impact of the diameters of the upstream main pipe and branch pipe on the controlled pressures and determined that the diameter of the branch pipe has a major influence on the pressures as it changes the flow switching rate. A similar investigation was conducted for downstream pipes. Our conclusions can be applied to actual engineering practice for high-head pumped storage power stations.