Study of silt erosion on performance of a Pelton turbine

The erosion of turbine components causes the decrease in turbine efficiency; increase in the maintenance cost and down time for turbine repair. All these factors contribute to the plant cost and cause the revenue losses. It is, therefore, essential to study the amount of efficiency loss owing to the erosion of turbine components due to the silt particles coming in water. The present study has been carried out to investigate the effect of silt erosion for different silt laden parameters and operating parameters such as silt concentration, size of silt particles, jet velocity and operating hours of the turbine on efficiency loss in Pelton turbine buckets.