Efficiency of biradial impulse turbines concerning rotor

blade angle, guide-vane deflection and blockage

ABSTRACT
Self-rectifying impulse turbines have two sets of guide vanes symmetrically located on each rotor side.
Aerodynamic losses resulting from the inherent misalignment between the rotor outflow and the
outlet guide vanes penalize these turbines’ efficiency. This paper presents the aerodynamic design of
a radial guide-vane system for self-rectifying biradial impulse turbines and the relation between guide-
vane flow deflection and blockage, rotor blade angle and turbine efficiency in design conditions. The
system comprises two concentric rows of constant-thickness vanes. The design method solves a multi-
objective optimization problem that maximizes deflection while minimizing outflow blockage,
returning a Pareto optimal set of guide vanes. A subset of these results is used to configure and assess
multiple turbine geometries. Data are obtained numerically with a RANS solver. The new guide-vane
system improves flow deflection over reference designs based on aerofoil-section vanes with identical
blockage. A turbine efficiency of 68.2% is achieved for a guide- vane deflection of 67.3◦, blockage
factor of 0.61 and rotor blade angle of 35◦. The new design leads to an estimated reduction of 58% on
the stagnation pressure losses in the outlet guide vanes.

1.Introduction
Despite the improvements of the last decade, wave energy produc- tion cost at the utility-scale
remains high when compared with solar and wind [1–3]. The lack of technological convergence is
evident, which means that several different prototypes are still in the early stages of development [4–
7]. Even with fierce competition between developers, no concept has proven to be effectively
superior, and only a few reached full-scale deployment.
With the increasing importance of the blue economy, low and medium-power stand-alone power
systems (i.e., off-the-grid electric systems) are emerging as potential commercial applications and as
the preliminary stages for utility-scale production [8–11]. These uses in- clude observation platforms
for scientific or surveillance purposes [12, 13], charging stations for uncrewed underwater vehicles
[14–16], and real-time monitoring and automation of offshore aquaculture farms [8]. The integration
of wave energy converters into breakwaters also pro- vides a means to develop the technology as a
stepping stone to the larger offshore market for grid-connected systems at a utility-scale [17– 19].
The Oscillating Water Column (OWC) principle is considered one of the most reliable concepts for
wave energy conversion.

2. Methodology
2.1. Guide-vane geometry
The guide-vane system comprises two concentric rows of constant- thickness radial guide vanes with
the camber line defined by Bézier curves [37,38]. The vanes are span-wise uniform sections stacked in
the axial direction without leaning or sweeping. These sections are designed by superposing the
thickness distribution perpendicularly to the camber line, scaling, rotating to the desired stagger angle,
and translating the vane inflow leading edge on the radial plane. The definitions of the following
paragraphs apply to both rows of guide vanes.
2.2. Boundary layer monitoring
During the optimization, boundary layer separation was monitored by assessing the direction of the
shear stress at the wall with respect to the main flow direction using the parameter
2.3. Optimization
The goals for the guide-vane design were to (i) maximize flow deflection at the inlet guide-vane
system, (ii) minimize stagnation pressure losses at the outlet guide vanes, and (iii) minimize stagnation
pressure losses at the inlet guide vanes. These goals could have been used as objective functions
resulting in a three-objective optimiza- tion problem. Nonetheless, the problem was reformulated to
reduce optimization convergence time.
2.4. Rotor geometry
The original rotor design methodology [22] and the design condi- tions for mitigation of flow incidence
and slip effects [27] were used in the present research. Suitable rotor geometries for the optimized
guide- vanes were designed by adequate selection of the rotor inlet/outlet blade metal angle
2.5. CFD simulations
The flow solver used was FINE/Open v10.1 [51] from NUMECA Inc. It is an unstructured-mesh, three-
dimensional, finite-volume, density- based, RANS solver with a cell-centred approach, explicit time-
marching multi-stage Runge–Kutta scheme, and viscous fluxes are approximated by central
differencing schemes.
2.6. Performance metrics
Due to their symmetry, the performance of biradial turbines is nominally independent of flow
direction. In what follows, atmospheric inflow conditions are considered (from section 1 to 6). Despite
not being a physical component, it is useful to consider the discharge as a turbine sector to account
for the kinetic energy lost at the turbine outlet.

3.Result
3.1. Guide-vane design
The inlet guide vanes were designed using steady-state two-dimensional flow conditions in the
optimization procedure de- scribed in Section 2. The geometry comprises two rows of 𝑍 = 30 vanes,
each with a thickness 𝑡m = 0.002m. The outermost radius of the optimized stators is 𝑟LE1 = 0.425 m,
Fig. 6.
3.2. Turbine performance
The sub-set of optimized inlet guide vanes, called Selected In- dividuals (Fig. 8 and Table 3), were
assessed in complete turbine configurations, including a nozzle, a rotor and a diffuser, as represented
in Figs. 2 and 3. Following the methodology of Section 2.4, the relation between the absolute flow
leaving the guide-vanes 𝛼2 and the rotor blade metal angle 𝛽4′ = 𝜋 − 𝛽3′ [27] is illustrated in Fig. 9 for
design con- ditions (assuming 𝛼2 ≈ 𝛼3). Since each rotor has a different blade metal angle, each turbine
configuration operates at a different dimensionless flow coefficient Φ, but in design conditions
(Section 2.4).
All rotors have seven blades with thickness 𝑡m∕𝑅 = 0.03. The nozzle/diffuser channel width is 𝑏∕𝑅 =
0.23 (𝑅 = 𝐷∕2). Each turbine configuration has a stator-to-rotor radius ratio 𝑟TE2 ∕𝑅 = 2.48. Sections 2
and 5 have radius 𝑟2∕𝑅 = 2.15, Fig. 3. The Reynolds number based on the rotor radius, 𝑅, and its
peripheral velocity, Ω𝑅, is Re = Ω𝑅2∕𝜈 =

4.Conclusion
This paper presents the aerodynamic design and analysis of a bi- radial turbine with fixed guide vanes.
The first research hypothesis explored in the present work was the existence of an optimum absolute
flow angle at the rotor inlet that maximizes turbine efficiency by bal- ancing rotor efficiency with stall
losses on the outlet guide vanes. This hypothesis was verified, and an optimum angle was found.
However, it should be noticed that this relationship is dependent on the geometric parametrization
used for guide vanes and the rotor design. Other parametrizations may result in different optimum
angles, especially for different stator-to-rotor radius ratios.

The second research hypothesis was that a constant-thickness guide- vane stator could provide
comparable flow deflection and blockage fac- tors to the aerofoil-based reference cases. This
hypothesis was verified, and a constant-thickness guide-vane stator with improved performance was
designed.
The conclusions of this study can be summarized as follows:
• Flow deflection in the new inlet guide vanes is improved com- pared to the reference cases. For the
same blockage factor 𝜁, deflection increases between 1◦ and 5◦ in the range 0.70 > 𝜁 > 0.50.
• State-of-the-art biradial rotors have their maximum total-to-total efficiency for an inlet/exit blade
metal angle 𝛽4′ ≈ 40◦. In contrast, the maximum total-to-static efficiency occurs for 𝛽4′ ≈ 25◦.
• For the tested turbine configurations, the flow deflection that maximizes the turbine total-to-static
efficiency is 𝛼2 = 22.7◦, which corresponds to a blockage factor 𝜁 = 0.61, and a state-of- the-art rotor
with blade metal angle 𝛽4′ = 35◦.
• The new design reduced the energy losses per unit of incoming kinetic energy at the outlet guide
vanes by 58% for the same blockage factor.
• The improvement in outlet guide vanes performance derives from the decreased radial distance
between the two rows of guide vanes, resulting in a smaller wake for the same blockage factor.
• Turbine configuration I0, with smaller stator-to-rotor radius ratio 𝑟TE∕𝑅 = 2.48, has a total-to-static
efficiency 4.3% higher than a previous turbine design with substantially larger 𝑟TE∕𝑅 = 3.85.
• Turbine configuration I7, with smaller stator-to-rotor radius ratio 𝑟TE∕𝑅 = 2.48 has a total-to-static
efficiency 5.6% lower than a previous turbine design with substantially larger 𝑟TE∕𝑅 = 3.85.
• Reducing the turbine stator-to-rotor radius ratio increases the kinetic energy (concerning the
available pressure head) of the flow at the outlet guide vanes and turbine discharge. This is the reason
for the efficiency drop of configuration I7 despite the reduction of losses per unit of the kinetic energy
of the new guide-vane design.
• For other stator-to-rotor radius ratio and/or guide vanes geome- tries, maximum turbine efficiency
is in the range 25◦ ≤ 𝛽4′ ≤ 40◦ (15.2◦ ≤ 𝛼2 ≤ 26.7◦).
The new guide-vane design can be scaled to find the deflection that maximizes turbine efficiency for
other stator-to-rotor radius ratios. It should be noted that for turbine configuration I7, the stator-to-
rotor radius ratio was decreased by 36% at the expense of 5.6% in efficiency.
This work demonstrates the aerodynamic viability of using constant- thickness guide vanes
manufactured by sheet metal bending. A techno- economic study could follow to assess the impact of
the three de- sign improvements: replacing milled guide vanes with sheet metal ones, decreasing the
number of guide vanes, and increasing turbine compactness.
CRediT authorship contribution statement
D.N. Ferreira: Conceptualization, Methodology, Software, Investi- gation, Formal analysis,
Visualization, Writing – original draft. L.M.C. Gato: Conceptualization, Methodology, Validation,
Writing – original draft, Supervision, Project administration, Funding acquisition. L. Eça: Methodology,
Software, Writing – review & editing.
Declaration of competing interest
The authors declare that they have no known competing finan- cial interests or personal relationships
that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.
Data availability
Data will be made available on request.
Acknowledgements
This research was partially supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology - FCT,
through IDMEC, under LAETA, project UIDB/50022/2020, and project MIT-EXPL/SOE/0094/2019.
Appendix. Appendix to the numerical modelling
This appendix assesses the numerical modelling, namely the choices of Section 2.5. The case studies
are Individual 7 of the optimized guide vanes and a rotor with 𝛽4′ = 35◦. As stated in Section 2.5,
turbine performance was derived from three simulations, inlet guide vanes (1,2), rotor with nozzle
and diffuser (2,5) and outlet guide vanes (5,6).
The uncertainty of a quantity of interest in a CFD solution is defined as the product of the estimated
numerical error, multiplied by a safety factor, resulting in the interval around a calculated solution
that contains the exact solution with 95% of confidence [56].