Development of Components for Increased Damping of Hydropower Rotors

The Swedish Hydropower Centre, SVC was founded in 2005 and is from 2018 a centre of excellence. Through research and development of technology, systems, methods and issues around hydropower and dams, we contribute to a renewable energy system.

Machine Design has received funding from Svenska Vattenkraf Centrum (SVC) for a research that aims to study and improve the dynamics of hydropower rotors. Hydropower is an important renewable energy resource worldwide and nearly half of the electricity production of Sweden comes from hydropower. Due to the introduction of intermittent energy resources, like wind/solar power, the role of the hydropower is to regulating the power fluctuation within the grid. This resulted more frequent start stops operations that potentially risk components for, e.g. fatique and wear.

This project aims to improve the dynamics of such machines for smooth and save operations. The research will include both experimentations and numerical simulations. The potential cause for excessive vibrations of such machines will be investigated and components that can increase the damping of the system will be developed. Besides, the project aims to develop computationally efficient simulation models to predict the dynamics of the rotor and support simulation of different real world scenarios.

Within the project, we will:

• investigate different bearings and compare their dynamic properties.
• develop simplified simulation models or procedures to increase the computational efficiency.
• simulate the start-up dynamics of the rotors.
• develop or improve the existing components to reduce excessive vibrations and increase system’s damping.