Hello all,
I have been helping out a friend to develop a crossflow micro-hydro turbine (5kW). I am myself an experienced simulation engineer, but in the field of mechanics and electromagnetics. The literature I found online so far describes how to design the penstock and dimension the runner. Nozzle and guide vane geometry is basically shown by a picture and very limited to none dimensioning of it has been found so far. Since my friend has some money he is willing to invest into this research, I figured we could try simulating it. I want to avoid going down the rabbit hole of studying CFD myself, as I am already juggling enough of activities and it will clearly take a lot of time. So I reached out to some companies I found online, but the ones I found so far are either generalists, who would learn by doing, in other words, would do a lot of iterations, which we would need to pay for, or experts that usually suggest full fidelity analysis, which would cost way beyond our budget.
We are not targeting reaching maximum efficiency. We need to understand whether our design is feasible and if not how to modify it.
I would really appreciate some secondary view on our approach and maybe suggestions on how to proceed.
Thanks!