Measurements have been performed on a reversible-pump turbine model installed in a closed loop conduit system. The characteristics of the unstable pump turbine in turbine mode show a hysteresis pattern. Hence the output of the system is dependent on the previous state of the flow and not only the input variables. The hysteresis pattern is a characteristic of the whole system, but is caused by the unstable pump turbine. The unstable part of the characteristics was measured by three different methods: 1) by transient sampling of data during the transition between operation modes, 2) by throttling valves that steepens the friction-loss curve, and 3) by switching the causality in the system such that the torque becomes an input parameter and the speed of rotation becomes an output parameter. In the valve throttling measurements a pressure dependency was seen for the characteristics at high nondimensional speeds. This was further investigated by additional measurements of the characteristics at three different pressure levels. A rigid-water-column stability analysis has been conducted. The classic H-Q criterion describes static stability for a pump turbine with constant speed of rotation. With the speed of rotation as a variable, there is a new static stability criterion in addition to the dynamic stability criterion.

Characteristics of a reversible-pump turbine have been measured with five different leading edge profiles in turbine mode. These profiles varied the inlet blade angle and the radius of curvature. Further geometry parameters have been investigated through numerical simulations. The pump turbine tested has much steeper flow-speed characteristics than a comparable Francis turbine. The most obvious geometry difference is the inlet part of the runner blades, where the blade angle for the pump turbine is much smaller than for the Francis turbine. Two different blade angles have been tested on a physical model and computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations have been performed on four different angles. Both methods show that a smaller blade angle gives less steep characteristics in turbine mode, whereas the measured s-shape in turbine brake- and turbine pumping mode gets more exaggerated. Long-radius leading edges result in less steep characteristics. The unstable pump turbine characteristics are in the literature shown to be a result of vortex formation in the runner and guide vane channels. A leading edge with longer curvature radius moves the formation of vortices towards higher speed of rotation.

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