Decomposition of the swirling flow field downstream of Francis turbine runner

Practical application of proper orthogonal decomposition (POD) is presented. Spatio-temporal behaviour of the coherent vortical structures in the draft tube of hydraulic turbine is studied for two partial load operating points. POD enables to identify the eigen modes, which compose the flow field and rank the modes according to their energy. Swirling flow fields are decomposed, which provides information about their streamwise and crosswise development and the energy transfer among modes. Presented methodology also assigns frequencies to the particular modes, which helps to identify the spectral properties of the flow with concrete mode shapes. Thus POD offers a complementary view to current time domain simulations or measurements.