Johannes Kverno is a PhD Candidate at the Department of Energy and Process Engineering at NTNU Norwegian University of Science and Technology, where he also did his post graduate studies focusing on fluid mechanics and pressure pulsations in Francis turbines.

PhD Project: Design of a Francis turbine for a high number of start-stop cycles

Johannes Kverno conducts research in task 3.3 under WP3. The main goal of his PhD work is to identify the main causes and locations of fatigue in Francis turbines during start-up, and ways to mitigate these. Both the hydraulic design of the Francis runner and the start-up procedure shall be investigated, with the possibility of utilizing variable speed in mind.

The study will mainly focus on experimental studies in the Waterpower laboratory at NTNU, maybe with some numerical simulations to further investigate what’s happening. The experiments to be performed shall be both on existing turbine designs, and on the runner designed for HydroFlex.

For more information, contact Johannes Kverno at  johannes.kverno@ntnu.no