Modal analysis of pump turbines in STOR-HY

Last week, a team from CDIF-UPC visited the impressive Vouglans Saut-Mortier hydropower plant (EDF) as part of the EU-funded project STOR-HY: Innovative Storage Technology and Operations in Hydropower. The team was kindly hosted by the project partner EDF, that contributes to the project with three demonstrators and who supported UPC during their visit.

The main goal of this first field trip was to experimentally determine the natural vibration modes of the rotor, including the pump-turbine and the shaft. This is one of the initial steps in the development of the Advanced Monitoring System, which will be integrated into the Cyber-physical platform for Advanced Decision Support (CADS).

The results of this analysis will be used to:

• Develop new predictive maintenance algorithms based on real-time tracking of natural frequencies as health indicators for the entire unit.
• Calibrate and validate the cyber mechanical models developed in the project.