Characteristics of the Shaft Vibration in a High Head Pump-Turbine

고낙차 펌프-터빈에서의 축계 진동 특성

This paper describes the shaft vibration phenomena measured on a pump-turbine of a pumped storage power plant. The pump-turbine runs at a rotational speed of 450 rpm (7.5 Hz). The power output (load) of the pump-turbine is varied from 100 to 300 MW in the generating mode. The magnitude of the shaft vibration highly depends on the power load. The vibration magnitude of the shaft is very high in the middle load zone from 170 to 210 MW, elsewhere the vibration is low. From nitration spectra, it is shown that the frequency of major nitration in that load zone is 2.5 Hz which is approximately $34\%$ of the shaft rotating speed in Hz. This frequency component does not occur below and above that load zone. This subsynchronous vibration is caused by the flow induced disturbance due to spiral vortex flow downstream of the pump-turbine runner. Furthermore, the shaft vibration is highly decreased due to an increased bearing preload.