Course detail

Fluid Machinery I

FSI-MS1 Acad. year: 2025/2026 Winter semester

The course deals with hydraulic design of flow profiles of pumps and turbines, i.e. runners, spiral cases, distributors, and provides students with detailed knowledge of behaviour of water machines at operation changes, as well as with an understanding of inception of axial and radial thrust.The hydraulic conception of fluid mechinery with scheduled parameters is also discussed.

Language of instruction

Czech

Number of ECTS credits

6

Supervisor

doc. Ing. Miloslav Haluza, CSc.

Department

Energy Institute

Entry knowledge

Students are expected to be familiar with the basic parts of hydromechanics, especially with basic principles of work of fluid machines.

Rules for evaluation and completion of the course

Course-unit credit is conditional on participation in the seminars and submitting written reports of given computational processes.
The exam has a written and an oral part.
Attendance at practicals is compulsory.Absence in justified cases has to be compensated for via a special task.

Aims

The aim of the course is to make students familiar with hydraulic design of basic parts of fluid machinery (pump and turbine) and their parts (spiral case, distributor), behaviour of fluid machine at operational changing, cavitation inception, radial and axial thrust and characteristic features of fluid machinery.
Students will understand basic principles of high-quality design of fluid machinery.

The study programmes with the given course

Programme N-SUE-P: Computational Simulations for Sustainable Energy, Master's, compulsory-optional

Programme N-ETI-P: Power and Thermo-fluid Engineering, Master's
specialization FLI: Fluid Engineering, compulsory

Type of course unit

 

Lecture

39 hours, optionally

Syllabus


  1. Rotating channel and calculation of impeller head

  2. The behavior of the pumps when the speed changes. Design of impeller diameter and width. Design of the shape of the meridian and the entrance part of the impeller.

  3. Conformal transformation and design of blade midline

  4. Impeller trimming, cavitation depression and dissipation.

  5. Spiral and outlet diffuser design

  6. Radial and axial impeller design. Multistage pumps – design of intermediate stage.

  7. Full 4-quadrant pump characteristic and calculation of the pump brake mode. Turbine as a pump. A pump like a turbine.

  8. Turbines – an introduction. Francis turbine. Kaplan turbine.

  9. Pelton turbine. Francis pump turbine – pumped water power plant

  10. Characteristic turbine curves. Hydrodynamic similarity. Unit values of flow, speed, torque and power.

  11. Hydraulic efficiency of the model and conversion to prototype.

  12. Cavitation in water turbines. Vortex rope in draft tube. Draft tube and its function.

  13. Reserve – called a lecture from industry.

Laboratory exercise

26 hours, compulsory

Syllabus


  1. Analysis of the specific energy of a centrifugal pump. Effect of impeller geometry and blades. Effect of the second term of the Euler pump equation (flow pre-rotation).

  2. The behavior of the pumps when the speed changes. Calculation of dissipation.

  3. Impeller Trimming and blade modifications

  4. Design of centrifugal pump hydraulics – part 1. Calculation of the basic dimensions of the impeller.

  5. Design of centrifugal pump hydraulics – part 2. Creation of meridional section.

  6. Design of hydraulics of a centrifugal pump – part 3. Calculation of the shape of the blades and creation of 3D geometry of the impeller within the Ansys BladeGen software.

  7. Design of hydraulics of a centrifugal pump – part 4. Creation of a computational grid of the impeller within the Ansys TurboGrid software. Calculation of the shape of the spiral.

  8. Design of hydraulics of a centrifugal pump – part 5. Creation of a computational grid of spiral. Creation of the geometry and computational grid of the pump inlet.

  9. Setting up and running the CFD calculation of the designed centrifugal pump hydraulics in the Ansys CFX environment.

  10. Evaluation of CFD calculation results of a centrifugal pump. Post-processing of data within the CFD-Post software.

  11. Calculation of axial and radial forces acting on the impeller of a centrifugal pump. Empirical estimates and method of calculation using CFD.

  12. Basic design of axial pump/turbine blades

  13. Basic design of the Francis turbine channel shape with regard to specific speed