Quelques réalisations industrielles de marche en déchargeur essais et réalisations

Examples of river power plant sluice operation

Ingénieur à la Société des Forges et Ateliers du Creusot (S.F.A.C.), Le Creusot.

Résumé

The problem of running Kaplan sets for sluice operation first arose in the design of the power units the Châteauneuf-du-Rhône plant in 1954. It was originally proposed to achieve this by off-cam operation of the guide vanes and runner blades whilst maintaining the power unit in synchronous operation. The initial results were disappointing for it was found that only a very limited amount of flow could be handled in this way. Further tests were run at Logis-Neuf, but without synchronous power unit operation, and a satisfactory procedure was developed based on operation with the runner blades fully open and the guide vanes partly closed, which sets in automatically whenever the plant cuts out and can also be gone over to from no-load operation. It was found that a much higher flow could be dealt with at Beauchastel by making use of the gate in the draught tube after the runner, in which most of the energy is dissipated. Turbine operation was seen to remain remarkably smooth. The Bourg-lès-Valence plant will be designed for the same kind of operation, but with a faster-acting draught tube gate than at Logis-Neuf to bring it on sooner, and with an electrical turbine governor to simplify control. Fixed guide vane power sets at the Ambialet plant are performing very satisfactorily in sluice operation with the draught tube gate partly closed.