Design of a Hydraulic Turbine with Biomimetic Technology

Abstract

Nowadays, the lack of electrical energy in isolated places or rural areas generates discomfort in its inhabitants as much as in the social, economic and academic aspects; by the other hand, it is known that the direction in which the future generating sources are frame will be the renewable type power plants, due to their diverse advantages. It is thus that the designers of new technologies are aimed at finding suitable forms of design that improve the capacity of the elements and that can be used on a small scale; one of these forms is based on the science of biomimetics. The objective of this research is to design and evaluate a proposal for a hydraulic turbine to determine the factors that influence hydroelectric generation in situations where the flow is at least 4m3/s, as well as to analyze the response of the system when subjected to computational analysis of fluids. The design methodology is based on biomimetic technology; this science tries to emulate natural elements as design inspiration, as well as the evaluation of the research by applying the experimental design of factorial “23”, which allows choosing an adequate combination of the factors found for this type of turbine. From the results obtained, a method is proposed to construct and evaluate virtual designs based on biomimetic technology, developing an efficient prototype, economic and appropriate to the characteristics of the place. It was possible to design the first type of blade based on the flower “water lily”, as a natural imitation unit, whose proposed design is suitable for electricity generation because it allows, through the science of biomimetics, to obtain a design extracted from nature and imitate it.