Vibration Behavior and Dynamic Stress of Runners of Very High Head Reversible Pump-turbines

In the development of very high head pumped storage projects, one of the critical problems is the strength of pumpturbine runners. Data obtained by stress measurements of high head pump-turbine runners indicated that dynamic stress due to the vibration of runner might be detrimental, possibly to cause fatigue failure, if the runner were designed without proper consideration on its dynamic behaviour. Numerous field stress measurements of runners and model tests conducted with hydrodynamic similarity revealed that the hydraulic excitation force developed by the interference of rotating runner blades with guide vane wakes sometimes would induce such heavy vibration of runner. Theoretical and experimental investigations on both the hydraulic excitation force and the natural frequencies of runner have been conducted to explore this forced vibration problem.