Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid

Mechanics

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Performance assessment of lift-based turbine for

small-scale power generation in water pipelines
using OpenFOAM

Ghada Diab, Mohamed Elhakeem & Ahmed M.A. Sattar

To cite this article: Ghada Diab, Mohamed Elhakeem & Ahmed M.A. Sattar (2022) Performance
assessment of lift-based turbine for small-scale power generation in water pipelines using
OpenFOAM, Engineering Applications of Computational Fluid Mechanics, 16:1, 536-550, DOI:
10.1080/19942060.2021.2019129

To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/19942060.2021.2019129

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ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS OF COMPUTATIONAL FLUID MECHANICS
2022, VOL. 16, NO. 1, 536–550
https://doi.org/10.1080/19942060.2021.2019129

Performance assessment of lift-based turbine for small-scale power generation in

water pipelines using OpenFOAM
Ghada Diaba , Mohamed Elhakeemb,c and Ahmed M.A. Sattar d

a Civil Department, German University in Cairo, Cairo, Egypt; b Civil Engineering Department, Abu Dhabi University, Abu Dhabi, UAE;
c Department of Civil Engineering, College of Engineering, University of Tennessee, Knoxville, TN, USA; d Department of Irrigation and
Hydraulics, Faculty of Engineering, Cairo University, Giza, Egypt

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

In-pipe water turbines have begun to gain interest for harvesting power on a small scale from Received 6 October 2021
pipe networks. However, few studies have addressed the feasibility of installing spherical lift-based Accepted 11 December 2021
helical-bladed turbines in a water supply network. Points such as the pressure drop and generated KEYWORDS
power remain unexplored. In this study, a three-dimensional numerical model, based on OpenFOAM, Gorlov; 3D numerical model;
is used to investigate the performance of the spherical lift-based helical-bladed in-pipe water tur- in-pipe turbine; helicity;
bine. The study aims to evaluate how the geometric properties of this turbine affect its performance pitch angle; turbine power;
in terms of power and efficiency, and the hydraulics of pipe flow in terms of pressure drop. The study OpenFOAM; lift-based;
considers a turbine of diameter 600 mm, with the following geometric properties: number of helical vertical axis; hydropower
blades 3, 4 and 5; blade chord length 10%, 15% and 20% of turbine diameter D; blade helicity 0°,
60° and 120°; and pitch angle −6°, −3°, 0° and 3°. These parameters are analyzed at tip speed ratios
(TSRs) of 2, 3 and 4. The results show that the five-blade turbine yields a power of 1300 W, while
the three-blade turbine yields only 870 W, at an optimum TSR of 3. A change in the chord length of
50% (from 0.10D to 0.15D) increases the turbine power by 88.4% and efficiency by 40% for the same
TSR. A further change to 0.20D gives no significant improvement in efficiency or power output. An
increase in the helical angle from 0° to 120° results in a 22.8% reduction in turbine power. The turbine
achieves the maximum power output of 1350 W at zero pitch angle, with a corresponding efficiency
of 27%. The maximum head loss observed is 1.6 m, which represents 2.7% of the total head in the
pipe. Solidity has a more pronounced effect on head losses than helicity and pitch angle.

Introduction applications include the installation on domestic pressur-

Hydropower is the most abundant, cheap and predictable
source of renewable energy. Therefore, it has registered
a steady and fast growth driven by the demand for
clean, reliable, steady and affordable power. Turbines
are used to extract the potential energy of water flow
and convert it into electrical energy. While various types
of water turbines have been around for hundreds of
years, more recently, interest has grown over in-pipe
turbines for harnessing clean renewable energy from
excess head in domestic water pipelines. Power output
ranges from 0.1 kW to 100 kW can be achieved for one
turbine, although more power can be produced using
multiple installations. Their applications mainly fall
between two types of pipelines system, namely, gravity-
fed and pressurized pipelines. They can be installed
in gravity-fed pipelines supplying water from elevated
tanks or mountains; in such cases, the free potential
energy is converted into electrical energy. However, other
ized pipelines; e.g. at the locations of pressure relief valves
in water mains, to power water metering and water mon-
itoring/control stations that are isolated from the elec-
trical grid. These in-pipe turbines have diameters in the
range of 82–250 mm, flow velocity of 1.5–3 m/s, number
of blades from six to 20 and power output of 88–480 W.
Pipe turbines are classified according to their axis of
rotation, into vertical and horizontal axis turbines. Verti-
cal axis turbines have the advantages of operating inde-
pendent of incident flow direction and achieving higher
efficiency at lower speed. Based on the driving force, ver-
tical axis turbines are either drag or lift based. A few in-
pipe turbines of drag type have been introduced and stud-
ied (e.g. Chen et al., 2013; Hasanzadeh et al., 2021; Jiyun
et al., 2018; Ma et al., 2018; Samora et al., 2016). How-
ever, these studies showed that the power output (and
hence power coefficient) of drag pipe turbines is relatively
low, with significant corresponding pressure losses. For

CONTACT Ahmed A. Sattar ahmoudy77@yahoo.com

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use,
distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
 ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS OF COMPUTATIONAL FLUID MECHANICS
instance, a pressure head loss of 5 m was reported by Ma
et al. (2018) with a 250 mm turbine, yielding only 480 W,
while for a smaller diameter of 100 mm, Hasanzadeh
et al. (2021) optimized a drag-based turbine to produce
200 W for the same pressure head loss of 5 m. Drag tur-
bines generally require more blades to build sufficient
flow resistance, and this has negative consequences on
performance and results in more flow area blockage. On
the other hand, lift-based turbines, developed in 1926 and
known as the Darrieus wind turbine, have lower obstruc-
tion to flow than drag-based turbines, offering generally
better starting capabilities and a higher power coefficient.
In 2011, a commercial lift-based in-pipe turbine
(Schlabach et al., 2011) was introduced to the market
for generation of power from gravity-fed large pipelines
with diameters of 600 to 1500 mm, with power of 14
and 100 kW, respectively. Although a decade has passed
since the development of the first commercial lift-based
in-pipe turbine, very few studies exist in the literature
that evaluated the performance of this type of turbine
(e.g. Tahadjodi Langroudi et al., 2020; Purdue ECT Team,
2016; Yang et al., 2019). Tahadjodi Langroudi et al.
(2020) presented theoretical and numerical analyses for
the effect of multiple design parameters on the power
coefficient, pressure coefficient and cavitation probabil-
ity as performance metrics. Yang et al. (2019) investi-
gated the start-up performance and pressure head loss
of lift- and drag-based turbines inside a pipe of 200 mm
via numerical and experimental analyses, and concluded
that the pressure head loss is less than 3% of the total
head. The Purdue ECT Team (2016) studied the rela-
tionship between power output, diameter and head loss
in lift-based pipe turbines. Several studies have studied
lift-based turbines; however, little is known about how
spherical helical lift-based turbines fit inside a pipe, in
terms of quantifying the head loss caused by these tur-
bines and disturbance to the flow, which is crucial from
a hydraulics aspect. The power output is also an impor-
tant aspect, to make sure that the turbines satisfy the main
purpose of installation in off-grid locations in the water
supply network. The aforementioned studies layout the
foundation for a better understanding of the feasibility of
spherical lift-based in-pipe turbine utilization; however,
some turbine performance metrics remain unexplored,
such as the extent of the turbine wake effect on the veloc-
ity profile in the pipeline; the interaction between turbine
parts, such as the hubs and shaft, with the flow of water;
and the pressure head loss and power associated with
larger pipe diameters, and 600 mm in particular.
Therefore, this paper aims to add to the existing liter-
ature on lift-based in-pipe turbines, by (1) assessing the
performance of a vertical-axis water pipe turbine to pro-
vide insight on the influence of various geometric design
537
parameters on turbine performance (torque, power and
efficiency) for a practical pipe diameter (600 mm) under
confined flow in pipes; (2) evaluating how altering the
operating conditions [tip speed ratio (TSR) and veloc-
ity] and geometric parameters affects the pressure drop
inside the pipeline under steady rotation and stall con-
ditions; and (3) determining the impact of the turbine
shaft and hubs on the overall turbine performance, and
the extent of the wake generated by the turbine. Rele-
vant variables include geometric properties such as the
shaft, hubs, number of blades, chord length, solidity,
helicity and pitch angle. While most of the literature
on pipe turbines analyzed small turbines with diame-
ter ≤ 250 mm, this study investigates a larger diameter
of 600 mm, which represents typical main pipelines with
flow velocity greater than 2.0 m/s.
A three-dimensional (3D) numerical model, based on
OpenFOAM, was utilized to investigate the performance
of one of the available in-pipe water turbines, namely
the lift-based helical-bladed turbine. Various geometric
properties and operational parameters of the helical-
bladed turbine are explained first, followed by a brief
description of the numerical model used in the analysis
of the turbine, and the built mesh and boundary con-
ditions. The model was validated against experimental
measurements for similar turbines available in the litera-
ture. Once the model had been validated, it was used to
examine the effect of altering the turbine geometric prop-
erties and operational parameters on its performance in
terms of turbine power, torque, efficiency and head losses.
Methodology
Vertical axis lift-based pipe turbine
Evolving from the Darrieus wind turbine, the Gorlov
helical turbine (Gorlov, 1995) was developed by chang-
ing the blades from straight to helical in an attempt to
decrease the encountered pulsatory torque issues and
increase turbine efficiency. Further, the Gorlov helical
wind turbine was utilized in pipelines by changing its
shape from cylindrical to spherical (Schlabach et al.,
2011).
Figure 1 shows the Gorlov pipe turbine, which has a
spherical shape to fit in a pipe. The turbine shaft or axis
of rotation is always perpendicular to the flow, regard-
less of its direction; thus, it will always rotate in the same
direction, with an angular velocity ω. The turbine blades
helically sweep the sphere’s outer imaginary surface area
and are connected to the bottom and top hubs. All blades
have the same cross-section, with the shape of a hydro-
foil; usually, a NACA 0020 hydrofoil is used for better
hydrodynamic characteristics (Talukdar et al., 2018). The
538 G. DIAB ET AL.
Figure 1. (a) Gorlov pipe turbine components; (b) drag and lift forces on a single-blade hydrofoil.
hydrofoil chord length, c, is about 15% of the turbine
diameter, at zero blade curvature to pitch angle ratio, β.
The Gorlov turbine concept is based on the movement
of the hydrofoils in order to change the apparent direction
of the flow or Azimuth angle θ, relative to the hydrofoil
axis, and thus change the (apparent) “angle of attack” of
the hydrofoil, α. This generates lift and drag forces on
each of the turbine hydrofoils. With lift force prevailing,
the resultant force on each hydrofoil propels the turbine
in the clockwise direction, causing a torque from which
the energy is generated. In the spherical turbine, blades
have a helical angle, , which has an important effect
by distributing evenly the hydrofoil sections through-
out turbine rotation cycle. Thus, there will be always a
hydrofoil section at every possible angle of attack. In this
way, the sum of the lift and drag forces on each blade
does not change abruptly with rotation angle, generating
a smoother torque curve, so there is much less vibration
and noise than in the Darrieus design. It also minimizes
stress in the pipe section where the turbine is installed
and facilitates self-starting of the turbine. The Gorlov
turbine can achieve efficiency of about 25–30%, where
efficiency is defined as:
T.ω
η=
ρgQ H
where T = torque, ρ = water density, g = acceleration
due to gravity, Q = volumetric flow rate and H = head
losses across the turbine.
Two parameters play an important role in the perfor-
mance of the considered pipe turbine; namely, the tip
speed ratio (TSR) and rotor solidity (σ ). The solidity is
defined as the ratio between the total blade area to the
swept area, and can be expressed as:
Nc
σ = (2)
πD
and the TSR is defined as follows:
ωD
TSR = (3)
2U
where N = number of rotor blades, c = hydrofoil chord
length, U = approaching flow velocity, ω = angular
velocity and D = pipe diameter. The recommended
value of σ for vertical axis wind turbines is in the range
of 0.2–0.6. For low TSR values, the turbine will tend to
slow or stall, while for high TSR values, the turbine will
rotate too quickly to extract power and will be stressed
and may structurally fail. Thus, the optimal TSR value
corresponds to the highest power output from the tur-
bine, and it depends on the turbine rotor and blades and
is specific for each turbine.
Model description
Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models have
shown to be effective tools not only for the preliminary
design, geometric optimization and performance assess-
(1)
ment applications of water turbines (Jiyun et al., 2018),
but also for applications such as liquid sloshing in reser-
voir tanks (Ghalandari et al., 2019) and the computation
of drag and lift coefficients (Salih et al., 2019). In this
study, a 3D numerical model, based on OpenFOAM, has
been utilized to evaluate how the geometric properties of
a lift-based helical-bladed turbine affect its performance.
OpenFOAM (2019) is open-source software that
solves the 3D unsteady Reynolds-averaged Navier–Stokes
 ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS OF COMPUTATIONAL FLUID MECHANICS
Figure 2. (a) Domain components of the test case; (b) cross-
section of the computational grid.
(URANS) equations for incompressible flow. The shear
stress transport (SST) k-ω turbulence model is chosen for
numerical system closure, since it is capable of predict-
ing flow separation and adverse pressure gradients and
has been classified as one of the most reliable turbulence
models for turbine numerical simulation, having good
agreement with experimental data (Alemi et al., 2015;
Gourdain, 2015; Roy & Saha, 2013).
To alleviate the effects of boundary conditions on
turbine simulation, inlet and outlet pipe lengths are
set 12 and 10 times the pipe diameter, respectively.
The pipe diameter is considered to be 600 mm, with
5 mm clearance between each turbine hub and pipe;
thus, the turbine diameter is 590 mm. Turbine model
geometry was first generated using SALOME (2019)
3D computer-aided design software. Afterwards, the
model is imported to OpenFOAM and split into mul-
tiple components, as shown in Figure 2(a) (inlet pipe,
turbine and outlet pipe) containing patches for phys-
ical boundary conditions. The model mesh has a sta-
tionary domain (pipe) and a rotating domain (tur-
bine) (Figure 2b). The turbine components, i.e. blades,
hubs and shaft, are assigned different patches. They are
included in the spherical rotating volume, with a free
stream spherical interface boundary patch. A constant
volumetric flow rate is assigned at the pipe inlet and
a pressure head at the pipe outlet downstream of the
interface.
Results
A basic structured background 3D hex mesh was gen-
erated using blockMesh to represent the boundaries of
the computational domain. Then, the snappyHexMesh
utility was used to generate the final hexahedra and split-
hexahedra mesh from the triangulated surface geome-
tries. Because of the asymmetric nature of the turbine,
the mesh was generated over the whole domain and
539
solved in 3D. Transient simulation with adjustable time
steps, with an average of 2−5 s per time step, was imple-
mented using a sliding mesh technique. Initial runs with
approximately 1.5, 2.1, 4, 5 and 5.7 million grids were car-
ried out to study mesh dependence and optimize its size
while probing the turbine’s output power, efficiency and
head loss (Figure 3a). The results showed that the out-
put turbine power started to stabilize with a maximum
difference of 1% starting from the 4 million-grid mesh.
Thus, the 4 million grid is utilized in this study, as it
offers a good balance between computational time and
numerical accuracy.
A detailed sensitivity analysis was performed for time
step and convergence criteria (Rezaeiha et al., 2018).
Analysis showed that an azimuthal increment angle of
0.0295° per time step would be sufficient for proper
solution convergence, with a mean Courant number
of 0.0025. The instantaneous torque output versus the
azimuthal position during a complete turbine revolution
for 15 revolutions of five turbine cases with various rota-
tion speeds (from 134 to 268 rpm) was monitored. It
was found that a minimum of three turbine revolutions
was needed to reach a statistically steady-state solution.
Figure 3(b) shows a sample of the torque produced from
two consecutive turbine rotations; beyond the third rev-
olution, the torque curves overlap. The computational
time required for one the cases was about 12 h to reach the
steady-state solution, which was used as the initial solu-
tion for the transient case. The transient case solution for
three revolutions of the turbine took an average of 648 h
(27 days) using an Intel Xeon Quad CPU E3-1271v3 @
3.60 GHz. A total of 28 runs was simulated using two
workstations for almost a year. Table 1 summarizes the
turbine parameters used in different simulations of vari-
ous runs. The examined parameters are the flow velocity,
TSR, number of blades, chord length, helicity and pitch
angle.
Model validation
The model was validated using the experimental data of
Samora et al. (2016), examining a horizontal-axis in-pipe
drag turbine, and Yang et al. examining a vertical-axis
in-pipe lift turbine. To compare the power and head pre-
dictions of the model against the experimental data, the
geometry and flow conditions of the denoted experi-
ments were simulated using OpenFOAM. Figure 4 shows
the predicted values of power and head from the model
simulation compared to the measured values from the
experiments under various volumetric flow rates. Aver-
age errors between the measured and predicted values of
turbine power and head drop were 4% and 8%. Tahad-
jodi Langroudi et al. (2020) reported a numerical model
540 G. DIAB ET AL.

Figure 3. (a) Error percentage versus mesh size (6 million mesh is the reference); (b) torque variation for the second and third turbine
revolutions.
Table 1. Parameters of various simulated turbine cases.
Flow velocity Chord length Helicity Pitch angle
Run serial U (m/s) TSR No. of blades N c (mm)  (°) (β)
1–3 2 2, 3 and 4 3 87 60 0
4–6 2 3, 4 and 5 4 87 60 0
7–9 2 2, 3 and 4 5 87 60 0
10–12 2 2, 3 and 4 5 58 60 0
13–15 2 2, 3 and 4 5 87 0 0
16–18 2 2, 3 and 4 5 87 120 0
19–21 2 2, 3 and 4 5 87 60 3
22–24 2 2, 3 and 4 5 87 60 −3
25 2 3 5 87 60 −6
26–28 1.5, 2.5 and 3.5 4, 2.4 and 1.7 5 87 60 0
Note: TSR = tip speed ratio.

Figure 4. OpenFOAM model results compared to experimentally measured turbine power and head loss versus volumetric flow rate.
[Experimental results from Samora et al. (2016) and Yang et al. (2019).]

error of head drop from 6% to 8%. It is observed that the
model tends to underestimate the head drop for high flow
rates by up to 32% and overestimate the power for low
flow rates by up to 15.7%. The approximation made in the
geometry of the turbine prior to modeling contributed to
these errors. However, the model was able to capture the
trend in power and head drop. Thus, OpenFOAM and
the proposed SST k-ω turbulence model were deemed
appropriate to describe and solve the turbine numerical
scheme.

Figure 5. Turbine driving forces and output torque during a complete turbine revolution: (a) lift and drag forces on a single blade; (b)
torque of each blade and overall turbine torque; (c) torque and angle of attack for a single blade; (d) torque fluctuations for various flow
velocities. TSR = tip speed ratio.
Turbine torque
Lift and drag forces were calculated on a single blade
in a turbine (N = 5, c = 58 mm,  = 60°, β = 0° and
TSR = 2, 4) through a complete turbine revolution, as
shown in Figure 5(a). Using the OpenFOAM results, the
pressure forces on each blade in the x- and y- directions
were used to calculate both tangential, FT , and normal,
FN , forces on each blade, as follows:
FT = −Fx cos(θ) − Fy sin(θ)
FN = Fx sin(θ) − Fy cos(θ)
Following the calculation of the tangential and normal
forces on the blades, the lift and drag forces can be
calculated using the following equations:
FD = FN sin(α) − FT cos(α)
FL = FT sin(α) + FN cos(α)
The above-mentioned forces were calculated for each
blade at multiple sections along the blades’ helical route.
The performance of the turbine blades is similar to that
of a typical hydrofoil blade; the lift force on the blade is
typically much higher than the drag force during a tur-
bine revolution (Figure 5a). Lift and drag forces increase
with the turbine revolution (increase in azimuth angle,
θ), until a maximum value is reached at θ = 72°, corre-
sponding to α = 22°. At the azimuth angle of 72°, flow
ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS OF COMPUTATIONAL FLUID MECHANICS 541
separation starts to occur around the blade (Figure 6),
leading to a deterioration in its hydrodynamic perfor-
mance, by reducing the lift force approaching a stall
condition. At mid-turbine revolution, θ = 180°, lift force
becomes zero and starts to change sign and thus direc-
tion, while drag force decreases to a minimum value, then
maintains the same direction and sign. Thus, for this tur-
bine, 22° is the critical angle of attack of the blade, where
the highest turbine torque is typically achieved during a
(4) single revolution (Figure 5b). Changing the TSR from 2 to
4 causes the stall condition to occur earlier in the turbine
(5) revolution at a lower angle of attack, and the average blade
torque output increases by 150% (Figure 5c). The impact
of changing the TSR from 2 to 4 on lift and drag forces is
more pronounced during the first half of turbine rotation
(0° ≤ θ ≤ 180°) since it doubles both lift and drag forces;
(6) however, it diminishes during the second half of turbine
rotation (180° ≤ θ ≤ 360°).
(7)
It is expected that higher flow velocities would
enhance turbine performance significantly but also cause
higher head losses. An increase in the flow velocity from
1.5 m/s to 3.5 m/s yielded a torque 4.5 times higher than
the initial value (Figure 5d). In addition, the turbine
power reached up to 3600 W from 400 W (nine times
higher). However, higher flow velocity induced more
head losses at the turbine, which were increased from
0.6 m (at U = 1.5 m/s) to 1.6 m (at U = 3.5 m/s), an
increase of 167%. A pressure drop of 1.6 m represents
542 G. DIAB ET AL.
Figure 6. Pressure (Pa) and velocity (m/s) distribution around a single blade (at mid-height) at different azimuth positions; tip speed
ratio (TSR) = 2.
2.7% of the total pressure head in the simulated case;
this observation agrees with the conclusion by Yang et al.
(2019) for a similar turbine with a smaller diameter of
200 mm, which induced head losses of less than 3% for
the flow rates included in their study.
It is to be noted that an advantage of the turbine is that
it does not obstruct flow in the pipeline in stall condition,
nor does it induce high pressure losses. Figure 7 shows the
velocity distribution along the center section of the pipe
for a stall turbine with high velocity U = 3.5 m/s. Despite
the high flow velocity, the pipe velocity profile started to
get rid of the blade wake effects and became fully devel-
oped at a distance equal to around four times the pipe
diameter, with a head loss of 0.67 m.
Simulations showed that high flow velocity increases
the turbine efficiency from 18% (at U = 1.5 m/s) to a
maximum value of 28% (at U = 2.5 m/s). Not only does
the efficiency not improve with the increase in flow veloc-
ity beyond 2.5 m/s, but also it decreases, owing to the
increase in head losses at the turbine. As discussed, the
increase in flow velocity through the turbine would yield
a corresponding increase in torque and thus turbine
power. However, this increase in power has to be consid-
ered with an associated increase in head losses through
the turbine, and thus a decrease in the turbine efficiency;
and a corresponding increase in the turbine torque
fluctuations (Figure 5d), which would structurally affect
the life and performance of the pipe and turbine. It was
found that a flow velocity of 2 m/s would yield the highest
efficiency for the turbine cases studied in this paper with
relatively low torque fluctuations. Thus, in the following
analysis, the flow velocity was set to 2 m/s and the TSR
was varied by changing the turbine speed (rotations per
minute, rpm). Preliminary runs were made for the tur-
bine with TSR ranging from 0.2 to 6 to find the optimal
TSR value, which corresponds to the maximum output
power and efficiency. The simulations showed that the
optimal TSR value was about 3; therefore, a range of TSR
from 2 to 4 was deemed appropriate to carry out the next
runs to identify the optimal number of blades and chord
length.
Blade number
The effect of the number of turbine blades, N, on the tur-
bine performance was also investigated. Turbines with
three, four and five blades were examined. As demon-
strated by Lucid Energy Technologies (Schlabach et al.,
2011), turbine blades are fixed from the top and bot-
tom to hubs, which cannot accommodate more than five
helical blades from a design viewpoint; this geometric
constraint makes it more feasible to control turbine solid-
ity via chord length adjustment. Thus, the maximum
 ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS OF COMPUTATIONAL FLUID MECHANICS 543

Figure 7. Velocity distribution (m/s) inside and downstream of a static turbine (at pipe mid-section); flow velocity = 3.5 m/s. TSR = tip
speed ratio.

Figure 8. Performance of three-, four- and five-bladed turbines versus tip speed ratio (TSR): (a) output power; (b) output torque during
complete turbine revolution at TSR = 3; (c) efficiency; (d) head losses.

number of possible blades was set to five. The increase in
the number of turbine blades increases turbine solidity, as
dictated by Equation (2) and shown in Figure 8(a), which
increases the capacity of the turbine to yield more power.
The turbine with five blades yielded a power of 1300 W,
while that with three blades yielded only 870 W, at opti-
mum TSR. An increase in turbine solidity by 67% (from
N = 3 to 5) increased the turbine power yield by 50%
(from 870 W to 1300 W). Jiyun et al. (2018) reported that
for lift-based cross-flow turbines, increasing the number
of blades would increase the turbine power.
The increase in the number of turbine blades also
increased turbine torque, from 45 N.m (for N = 3) to
65 N.m (for N = 5), and reduced the unwanted torque
fluctuations by generating more (five) peaks during a
complete revolution of the turbine, at θ = 16°, 88°, 160°,
232° and 304°, as shown in Figure 8(b). The simulation
also showed that turbine power and efficiency increased
with the increase in TSR, reaching a peak (at optimum
TSR of 3), and then decreased. This trend has also been
documented for lift-based turbines by other investiga-
tors (e.g. Jiyun et al., 2018). Maximum turbine efficiency
(Figure 8c), at TSR = 3, was found to be almost the same
for N = 3, 4 and 5, with an average value of 29%. Thus,
the increase in the number of blades from three to five
did not have much effect on the overall efficiency of the
544 G. DIAB ET AL.
Figure 9. Flow field in and around the turbine (at mid-height) for three- and five-bladed turbines at different tip speed ratios (TSRs): (a)
pressure field (Pa); (b) velocity field (m/s).
turbine, as the increase in torque was balanced by the cor-
responding increase in the head losses across the turbine
(Figure 8d).
Figure 9 shows the pressure and velocity distribution
at the mid-section of the three- and five-blade turbines
at various TSR values. It can be seen from the figure that
for TSRs in the range of 2–4, the increase in the num-
ber of turbine blades from three to five decelerated the
flow velocity inside the domain enclosed by the turbine.
Thus, the pressure would increase and consequently the
lift on blade would also increase, enhancing the turbine
power.
Chord length
To investigate the effect of the chord length of the turbine
blade on its performance, the chord length was changed
from 58 mm (around 10% of turbine diameter) to 87 mm
(around 15% of turbine diameter). The turbine solidity
represents resistance to flow in pipelines by blocking a
portion of the pipe cross-sectional area. In the case of
high turbine solidity, in addition to the rotational speed
of the turbine, the turbine can behave as an obstacle to
water and thus would experience a high reduction in
efficiency. Talukdar et al. (2018) recommended that tur-
bine solidity must be in the range of 0.2–0.35 for the
best operational conditions. On the other hand, Li and Li
(2010) suggested that a narrower range of helical turbine
solidity (0.15–0.20) would be better, to ensure that the
turbine efficiency would not drop significantly for high
flow conditions.
For a chord length of 58 mm, the turbine solid-
ity was 22%, while it was 33% for a chord length of
87 mm. Nonetheless, Figure 10(a) shows that the turbine
power was 700 W and 1300 W for blade chord lengths
of 58 mm and 87 mm, respectively. Hence, the turbine
power increased by 88.4% for a 50% bigger chord length
(from 58 mm to 87 mm) at the optimal TSR value of 3.
Other runs showed that a bigger chord length of 116 mm
resulted in a slight increase in turbine power, with new
power of only 1380 W. The pressure drop across the tur-
bine varied linearly with TSR for simulated chord lengths,
since rotating the turbine with higher speed increases
the interaction/blockage of flow through the turbine,
thus inducing more head loss (Figure 10b). High turbine
solidity is expected to have the same impact on pressure
 ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS OF COMPUTATIONAL FLUID MECHANICS
Figure 10. Performance of five-bladed turbines with chord lengths of 58 and 87 mm versus tip speed ratio (TSR): (a) output power; (b)
head losses; (c) efficiency; (d) output torque during complete turbine revolution at TSR = 2, 3 and 4.
drop as high TSR owing to the additional flow block-
age. For a 50% increase in chord length (from 58 mm to
87 mm), the head losses varied by a similar percentage of
around 54% (from 0.59 m to 0.89 m) at a TSR of 3. Exam-
ining the results of the turbine efficiency (Figure 10c), it
can be seen that increasing the chord length (from 58 mm
to 87 mm) improved the overall turbine efficiency (from
20% to 27%) at a TSR of 3. A further increase in chord
length, to 116 mm, showed that the turbine efficiency
would only reach 28%, which can be attributed to the
high head loss encountered for a chord length of 116 mm.
Moreover, a bigger chord length of 87 mm reduced torque
fluctuations (Figure 10d).
Both the number of blades and the chord length
are significant contributors to turbine solidity. However,
practical limits restrict the number of helical blades to
five and it is recommended that solidity should not
exceed 0.35. In this study, a chord length of 20% of the
turbine diameter yielded the highest efficiency and lowest
power fluctuations. Previous results show that the effect
of blade chord length is more pronounced in enhancing
turbine performance than that associated with the num-
ber of blades. A change in solidity by 67% (by increasing
the number of blades from three to five) led to higher tur-
bine output power, by 52%, at TSR = 3, while a change in
solidity by only 50% (by increasing the chord length from
58 mm to 87 mm) increased the power output by 88.4%.
545
Figure 11 shows the pressure and velocity distribu-
tion at the mid-section of five-bladed turbines with chord
lengths of 58 and 87 mm at different TSR values. It was
observed that the increase in turbine solidity due to
increasing chord length had an impact on both the veloc-
ity and pressure inside the turbine. Increasing the chord
length induced a change in the flow field inside the tur-
bine, especially around the blades, which was associated
with changes in the pressure magnitude. This resulted in
higher pressure variation across a single blade and higher
lift force and power output.
Helicity
The helical shape of the turbine blades is the main con-
tribution made by Gorlov for enhancing turbine perfor-
mance compared to straight-bladed turbines. The helical
angle, , is changed from zero (straight blades) to 60°
and 120°. Figure 12(a) shows that at a TSR of 3, all of
the rotors experienced the highest power of 1443, 1328
and 1114 W for  = 0°, 60° and 120°, respectively. The
turbine with straight blades,  = 0°, had the highest
power output at TSR = 3, while blades with  = 60°
and 120° had lower power output. Increasing the helical
angle from 0° to 120° resulted in a 22.8% reduction in tur-
bine power. However, when examining the performance
of the rotors at any TSR, the rotor with straight blades has
546 G. DIAB ET AL.
Figure 11. Flow field in and around five-bladed turbines (at mid-height) for chord lengths of 58 and 87 mm at different tip speed ratios
(TSRs): (a) pressure field (Pa); (b) velocity field (m/s).
the lowest power compared to rotors with a helical blade
shape. Thus, helical-bladed rotors have an advantage over
straight-bladed ones by providing a steadier power over a
range of TSR values, while straight-bladed rotors provide
the highest power.
Adjusting the helicity from 60° to 120° resulted in a
reduction in the power, by 10.7%, 16% and 28%, at TSRs
of 2, 3 and 4, respectively. This means that increasing
the helicity beyond a certain value (60° in this study)
would result in a reduction in the power produced by
the turbine. The torque curve tended to be stable, with
minimum variation until it reached the least fluctuation
at  = 120° (Figure 12c and d). This is typical behavior
for NACA hydrofoil blades, which achieve their hydrody-
namic maximum when flow is perpendicular to the blade
section (in straight-bladed turbine). In helical-bladed
turbines, the flow over the blades is deformed in a span-
wise direction, reducing blade section efficiency and thus
total turbine efficiency. Marsh et al. (2015) investigated
the effect of helicity from 0° to 120° at a stream velocity
of 1.5 m/s and TSR in the range of 1.5–3.5, and observed
similar results, with the straight-bladed rotor having the
highest power output, while increasing the blade overlap
reduced the power output.
Figure 12(b) shows the head loss across the rotor of
the turbine for  = 0°, 60° and 120° at TSRs of 2, 3 and
4. When the helicity was reduced from 60° to 0°, the
head loss increased by 3.4%, 4.9% and 2.7% at TSRs of
2, 3 and 4, respectively. On the other hand, when helicity
was adjusted from 60° to 120°, the head loss was reduced
almost by 12% for all TSR values. Thus, a high helical
angle reduced the head loss across the turbine. In gen-
eral, the effect of blade helicity on head losses was less
pronounced than the effects on power output and overall
efficiency.
Pitch angle
The effect of blade curvature, or blade pitch angle β, on
the turbine performance was further studied by examin-
ing the effect of β on turbine output power, torque and
efficiency. Pitch angles of 0°, 3°, −3° and −6° were con-
sidered in the analysis. The maximum power (1350 W)
and efficiency (27%) were achieved by the turbine when β
 ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS OF COMPUTATIONAL FLUID MECHANICS
Figure 12. Performance of a five-bladed turbine with helicity of 0°, 60° and 120° versus tip speed ratio (TSR): (a) output power; (b) head
losses; output torque during complete turbine revolution at (c) TSR = 2 and (d) TSR = 4.
was 0°. At other pitch angles, the power and efficiency sig-
nificantly decreased, as shown in Figure 13(a). For pitch
angles of ± 3°, turbine power and efficiency decreased by
38%; this is attributed to the early stall effect on the blade.
On the other hand, the variation in blade pitch angle
was found to have a negligible effect on the head losses
across the turbine; a variation of head losses of 2% was
observed at β = −6° compared to β = 0°. The highest
torque was produced by the turbine at zero pitch angle, as
shown in Figure 13(b). While both negative and positive
pitch angles produced lower torque values, negative pitch
angles had higher torque than positive pitch angles. How-
ever, the pitch angle variation did not have a noticeable
effect on changing the torque fluctuations.
Hubs and shaft
The hubs and shaft are essential parts of the turbine for
fixation of the helical blades and connection with the
generator. Although they do not contribute to the gen-
eration of lift force, they may have an adverse impact on
the hydrodynamic performance of the turbine. The shaft
diameter, ds , is taken as 52 mm in this study, which is
10% of the turbine diameter. Examination of the two-
dimensional velocity field around the shaft in Figure 14
at two sections showed that the effect of the shaft on flow
velocity was minimal on the flow field inside the turbine.
Where the flow met the shaft, the streamlines split and
passed from both sides, leading to the creation of a wake
547
region behind the shaft. In the shaft wake region, the flow
velocity was zero, with eddies and turbulence. This wake
region did not have any pronounced effect on the blades
downstream of the turbine at 180° ≤ θ ≤ 360°, except
in the sections near the lower and upper hubs. Near the
hubs, the wake generated by the shaft would result in a
reduction in the lift force in these blade sections. How-
ever, this had minimal or no effect on the total power
generated by the turbine. Figure 15 shows how the flow
separation around the shaft resulted in a zero-flow region
that extended to around 3.5ds from the shaft. After this
distance, the flow restored its velocity before interacting
with the downstream blades again. Figure 15 shows also
that the minor shaft effect on flow velocity inside the tur-
bine was independent of the number of blades or solidity
of the turbine.
The top and bottom hubs (with diameter of 250 mm)
were expected to have more pronounced effects on the
turbine performance compared to the shaft owing to the
increase in the drag force (Figure 16). Average drag forces
of 43 and 74.7 N were experienced by the turbine along
various positions during one complete revolution, with
variation up to 25.7% (difference between maximum and
minimum), at TSRs of 2 and 4, respectively. The top and
bottom hubs were expected to experience similar drag
forces owing to the symmetric nature of the hubs. Minor
variations were observed between the drag force on the
lower and top hubs, up to 22.3% (Figure 16), at some
azimuth positions. This was attributed to the effect of the
548 G. DIAB ET AL.

Figure 13. Performance of a five-bladed turbine with various pitch angles: (a) output power and efficiency; (b) output torque during
complete turbine revolution at tip speed ratio (TSR) = 3.

Figure 14. Velocity flow field (m/s) in and around the turbine: (a) near hub; (b) middle section, for a five-blade turbine at different tip
speed ratios (TSRs) and azimuth angles.

Figure 15. Normalized flow velocity at various sections downstream of the turbine shaft at the indicated locations.

blades on the velocity profile near the hubs and their heli-
cal shape. At a high TSR value of 4, the average drag force
experienced by the hub was more than that at a TSR value
of 2. This was attributed to the increase in velocity around
the hub at a high TSR, which would increase the drag,
which is proportional to the second power (square) of
velocity. To illustrate this argument, the velocity distri-
bution around the hub is plotted in Figure 17 at TSRs of
2, 3 and 4. The extent of disturbance in the velocity of
flow around the hub was higher in the case of a TSR of
4 than for TSRs of 3 and 2. The velocity profile recovery
occurred more rapidly in the case of a TSR of 2.
 ENGINEERING APPLICATIONS OF COMPUTATIONAL FLUID MECHANICS
Figure 16. Drag force at different azimuth positions on the shaft,
top hub and bottom hub at tip speed ratios (TSRs) of 2 and 4.
Figure 17. Velocity field (m/s) downstream of the top hub at
different tip speed ratios (TSRs): (a) TSR = 2; (b) TSR = 3; (c)
TSR = 4.
Conclusions
This research explored the potential of in-pipe turbines
to be installed in main pipelines. A 3D numerical model,
based on OpenFOAM, was utilized to investigate the
performance of one of the available in-pipe water tur-
bines, namely the lift-based helical-bladed turbine. The
performance of the turbine was assessed by examining
the effects of its geometric properties, such as the num-
ber of blades, chord length, helicity and pitch angle, at
different TSRs on the turbine’s power, torque, torque fluc-
tuation, efficiency and head losses. The main findings are
as follows.
(1) Owing to the spherical shape of the turbine, geo-
metric constraints made it complicated to use more
than five blades; however, adjusting the solidity via
the chord length was more feasible from a design
viewpoint. A five-bladed turbine produced more
power (1300 W) than a three-bladed (870 W) tur-
bine, by 50%, while all turbines (three-, four- and
five-bladed) had the same efficiency (29%) at a TSR
of 3. Chord length adjustment from 10% to 15% and
20% of turbine diameters resulted in power increases
549
of 88.4% and 97.1%, respectively (with respect to
10% diameter chord length) at a TSR of 3.
(2) Adjusting turbine helicity from 0° to 60° and 120°
reduced the power by 8% and 22%, respectively
(compared to 0°). Introducing a pitch angle of 3°
to the blades reduced the overall efficiency by 38%
regardless of the direction.
(3) The shaft and hub generated drag force; however,
the impact of the drag forces on turbine perfor-
mance was minimal. Turbine stall created a wake
that extended to four times the turbine diameter,
beyond which the velocity profile was back to nor-
mal at a velocity of 3.5 m/s.
(4) The pressure drop is one of the most important
metrics of in-pipe turbine performance. For all sim-
ulated cases, the head drop did not exceed 1.6 m,
which is equivalent to 2.7% of the total head defined
inside the pipe. Head drop varied linearly with TSR
and was proportional to change in solidity. On the
other hand, helicity and pitch angle had minimal
effects on head loss. Thus, installing in-pipe turbines
would have a minimal impact on flow in a water
supply network.
In conclusion, this paper presented an initial charac-
terization of the turbine performance for limited TSRs
and flow velocities. Future research will consider a wider
range of TSRs and flow velocities for detailed turbine per-
formance curves. Moreover, this study suggests a distance
of four times the turbine diameter between installed tur-
bines in series. The behavior of multiple turbines installed
in series inside the pipe with different diameters will
be further studied with respect to cavitation, excessive
pressure drop and any possible deterioration in turbine
performance.
Acknowledgments
The writers are indebted to Eng. Lobus Pirkl from CFD sup-
port, s.r.o. for his help in setting the numerical model sim-
ulations. Research has been funded by the University of Abu
Dhabi, office of research.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
ORCID
Ahmed M.A. Sattar http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2608-6979
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