This paper presents the flow analysis of flow over a cylindrical helical-blade turbine to investigate its optimum performance by varying design parameters. For numerical investigations, shear stress transport (SST) turbulence model is used. This simulation is carried out using commercial code CFX by ANSYS Inc. In this paper, the shape optimization was of turbine blades with NACA0021 performed for the vertical-axis turbine having the cylindrical shape. The influences of blade angle of attack, helical angle, and solidity on each shape are grasped. From of the flow analysis, power coefficient decreased when the helical angle was 20 degrees or more, and no electricity is produced when the solidity of 0.1. As a result of the shape optimization, the cylindrical turbine showed the highest power coefficient of 0.2733 at 3° of the blade angle of attack, 10° of the helical angle, and 0.2 of the solidity at the tip speed ratio of 1.

Pico hydropower, which refers to generation under 5kW, has been adopted in many places in the world as a cost effective and reliable power supply. The turbine units are important components for pico hydropower and must be portable, simple to maintain. In this study, therefore, Turgo turbine units were developed which reported to be reliable, robust and able to operate efficiently over a range of flow rates. A 2D steady-state mathematical model was developed to calculate the performance and design the optimal geometry of Turgo runner. Also, a laboratory-scale simulator was constructed to test the operating performance and experiments were carried out to determine the effect on turbine efficiency of variation in speed and jet diameter. Under the best conditions, developed Turgo turbine efficiency was observed to be over 90% at a speed of 900rpm.

The performance of helical hydro turbine in water pipe line depends on the sectional shape of turbine blade, pitch angle of turbine blade, solidity and number of turbine blades, To investigate the effects of these design factors on the performance of helical hydro turbine, flow analysis was carried out by using commercial code ANSYS CFX version 14..5. From CFD analysis we obtained the optimum design factors which were the asymmetric blade shape of NACA4420, the pitch angle of 15 degrees and the solidity of 0.3. These results can be used for the actual design of sphere-shaped helical turbine in water pipe line.