Estimation of numerical accuracy for the flow field in a draft tube

The potential for overall efficiency improvements of modern hydro power turbines is a few percent. A significant part of the losses occurs in the draft tube. To improve the efficiency by analysing the flow in the draft tube, it is therefore necessary to do this accurately, i.e. one must know how large the iterative and the grid errors are. This was done by comparing three different methods to estimate errors. Four grids (122,976 to 4,592 cells) and two numerical schemes (hybrid differencing and CCCT) were used in the comparison. To assess the iterative error, the convergence history and the final value of the residuals were used. The grid error estimates were based on Richardson extrapolation and least square curve fitting. Using these methods we could, apart from estimate the error, also calculate the apparent order of the numerical schemes. The effects of using double or single precision and changing the under relaxation factors were also investigated. To check the grid error the pressure recovery factor was used. The iterative error based on the pressure recovery factor was very small for all grids (of the order 10^–4 percent for the CCCT scheme and 10^–10percent for the hybrid scheme). The grid error was about 10 percent for the finest grid and the apparent order of the numerical schemes were 1.6 for CCCT (formally second order) and 1.4 for hybrid differencing (formally first order). The conclusion is that there are several methods available that can be used in practical simulations to estimate numerical errors and that in this particular case, the errors were too large. The methods for estimating the errors also allowed us to compute the necessary grid size for a target value of the grid error. For a target value of 1 percent, the necessary grid size for this case was computed to 2 million cells.