Development of blade element momentum (BEM) method for hydropower

The BEM method is extensively used for analyzing the aerodynamic performance of wind turbines and marine propellers. It is computationally fast and is easily implemented while it can give fairly accurate results. Application of the BEM method to predict the forces acting on rotor blades for a model scale axial shaft-driven Counter-Rotating Pump-Turbine (CRPT) is investigated. Some modifications have been proposed to adopt the classical BEM method for CRPT machine and the results are validated against results from Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). The results display that the proposed modifications can improve the loading predicted by BEM. However, the improvements are more pronounced in pump mode rather than turbine mode