Hydraulic Oscillation Analysis of the Hydropower Station with an Equivalent Circuit-Based Hydraulic Impedance Scheme

The concept of hydraulic impedance is widely used for periodic or oscillating flow scenarios in applied hydraulic transients. This paper proposes an equivalent circuit-based discrete hydraulic impedance model for the hydraulic system of the power station. The equivalent hydraulic circuit is established by an analogy between the water hammer wave propagation in pressurized pipes and the electromagnetic wave propagation in conductors. The discrete hydraulic impedance at a given location is obtained by calculating the total specific impedance of the series and parallel circuits from one end to the other. In addition, the numerical solution process to obtain the natural frequencies of the system via the proposed model is designed in detail. Furthermore, oscillation characteristics of the pipelines in the hydropower station are investigated. The variation trends of the decay coefficients of different orders of oscillation of the system and the influence of turbine impedance on the oscillation frequencies are discussed, respectively.