Investigation of the Configuration of Small Hydropower using a Novel Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Method

<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title>
<jats:p>A novel Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) method utilizing Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics (SPH) has been developed and applied to a simulation of flows in small hydropower systems. The simulation of the flow through a gravitational vortex turbine (GVT) small hydropower system where the flow is directed to a circular basin with a vertical-axis turbine, harnessing the rotational energy of the vortex formed to drive the turbine. Two modes of Fluid-Structure Interactions (FSI) were tested with identical flow conditions to evaluate the potential of this method to simulate complex FSI scenarios. It was found that simulation results for both one-way and two-way interactions produced reasonable results. The two-way interaction result proved to reflect more accurate FSI scenarios, but more studies are needed to provide validation.</jats:p>