INVESTIGATING THE MALFUNCTION OF A HYDRO- GENERATOR'S COOLING-SYSTEM
Electro-magnetic losses within a hydro-generator are sources of heat which heat the generator, and then have to be conducted away. This may, however, cause a temperature rise of the stator bars thus reducing the life-span of the insulation materials. Therefore, any temperature rise of the stator windings is limited. In order to inspect the operation of a cooling-system, several temperature sensors have to be integrated into the stator core in order to measure its temperature, which should not exceed 80 0 C. Temperature measurements performed on a generator showed some deviations from the design temperatures, especially at full-power operation. Thus, an attempt was made to analyse the operation of a cooling-system, and to eventually increase its cooling capacity. It was impossible to perform any complex measurements during the generator’s operation, due to safety reasons. Therefore, our work was limited to 3D CFD simulations using ANSYS CFX 11 solver. The simulations were partly supported by the measurements of some main integral parameters, such as mass-flow rate and pressure drop across the cooling ducts and radiators, as performed during generator idling. The results are presented and discussed in this paper.
Full Surface Heat Transfer Characteristics of Stator Ventilation Duct of a Turbine Generator
Turbine generators operate with complex cooling systems due to the challenge in controlling the peak temperature of the stator bar caused by Ohm loss, which is unavoidable. Therefore, it is important to characterize and quantify the thermal performance of the cooling system. The focus of the present research is to investigate the heat transfer and pressure loss characteristics of a typical cooling system, the so-called stator ventilation duct. A real scale model was built at its operating conditions for the present study. The direction of cooling air was varied to consider its operation condition, so that there are: (1) outward flow; and (2) inward flow cases. In addition, the effect of (3) cross flow (inward with cross flow case) was also studied. The transient heat transfer method using thermochromic liquid crystals is implemented to measure full surface heat transfer distribution. A series of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analyses were also conducted to support the observation from the experiment. For the outward flow case, the results suggest that the average Nusselt numbers of the 2nd and 3rd ducts are at maximum 100% and 30% higher, respectively, than the inward flow case. The trend was similar with the effect of cross flow. The CFD results were in good agreement with the experimental data.
Investigations of dielectric gratings using electrodynamic models based on volume integral equations
Eigenmodes of planar and cylindrical dielectric gratings (DGs) and electromagnetic wave scattering from multiplayer DGs are investigated. The DG characteristics are calculated using numerical-analytical solution of integral equations (IEs).