Dans le contexte économique et environnemental actuel, la prochaine génération de moteurs d’avion devra offrir opérabilité, compacité et hauts rendements. Les compresseurs demeurent une des pièces critiques de ces moteurs, et leur conception un challenge. À débit réduit, leur plage de fonctionnement est contrainte par la limite de pompage, phénomène hautement instable et dangereux. À ce jour, peu d’études expérimentales sur un compresseur en situation de pompage ont été réalisées, étant donné le danger inhérent pour les installations. Dans ce cadre, la simulation numérique peut apporter des informations sur le développement des instabilités aérodynamiques et aider à la prévision de la limite de pompage. L’objectif du travail présenté dans cette thèse est de mettre en place une méthode afin de simuler numériquement l’entrée en pompage et un cycle complet de l’instabilité avec le code elsA. Le cas test retenu est le compresseur de recherche axial multi-étage CREATE dessiné par Snecma, et étudié expérimentalement par le LMFA. Des études antérieures ont montré le rôle joué par les volumes entourant le compresseur ; l’originalité de cette étude réside donc dans l’inclusion des volumes du banc d’essai dans la simulation du compresseur. Une des difficultés inhérentes à la simulation de ces instabilités est leur temps caractéristique, qui représente plus d’une centaine de rotations de la machine. Le calcul a donc nécessité le recours à une approche massivement parallèle ; environ un million d’heures CPU ont été utilisées pour décrire le cycle. Enfin, compte tenu du retournement de l’écoulement dans le compresseur, les conditions aux limites ont été modifiées pour pouvoir s’adapter aux changements de sens de l’écoulement. La simulation a permis de décrire l’entrée en pompage et un cycle complet de l’instabilité. La comparaison avec les données expérimentales montre que les caractéristiques du cycle sont correctement prédites (phénomènes physiques précurseurs de l’instabilité, durée du cycle..). En parallèle, une étude acoustique a été menée afin de mettre en évidence les modes propres du banc d’essai. L’analyse de ces résultats a notamment montré le rôle de l’acoustique dans le déclenchement du pompage. Les différentes phases du cycle de pompage sont ensuite étudiées, et caractérisées (déclenchement, débit inversé, récupération et recompression). Ce travail a généré une base de données qui permet de mieux comprendre les instabilités qui se développent dans ce type de machine. À terme, ces résultats pourront être utilisés pour élaborer et valider des modélisations du phénomène de pompage moins coûteuses, pouvant intervenir dans un cycle de conception. / In order to deal with the current economical and environmental context, the next engine generation will need to offer great operability, compactness and high efficiency. In aircraft engines, the compressor remains one of the critical components, and its design is still a challenging task. At low massflow rate, their operability is bounded by the surge limit, surge being a highly unstable and dangerous phenomenon. Today, few experimental studies on compressor surge are available because of the inherent threat to the facility. In that context, numerical simulation can bring about information on the onset of aerodynamic instabilities and help to predict the surge limit. The work presented in this PhD thesis aims at setting up a method to perform the numerical simulation of surge inception and of an entire cycle of the instability with the CFD code elsA. The chosen test case is the axial multistage research compressor CREATE designed and built by Snecma, and experimentally studied at LMFA. Previous studies have pointed out the role of the volumes adjacent to the compressor ; the originality of this work is thus the inclusion of the volumes of the test-rig in the simulation of the compressor. One of the difficulties inherent to the simulation of those instabilities is their characteristic time of at least one hundred revolutions of the machine. Hence the computation has required a massively parallel approach and about one million CPU hours. Finally, given that the flow reverses during a surge cycle, the boundary conditions have been modified to be able to cope with the flow inversions. The simulation was able to capture surge inception and the entire cycle of the instability. The comparison with the experimental data showed that the main patterns of the cycle are correctly predicted (precursor phenomena of surge, duration of the cycle...). In the meantime, an acoustic study has been performed in order to isolate the eigenmodes of the test-rig. The analysis of the results pointed out the role of acoustic phenomena in surge inception. The different phases of the cycle are then studied and characterized (surge inception, reversed-flow phase, recovery and repressurization). This work has incremented a database that allows a better understanding of the instabilities that develop in this kind of machine. From now on, those results may help to elaborate and validate cheaper models of the surge phenomenon to be used in the design process.

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Global renewable energy requirements rapidly increase with the transition to a fossil-free society. As a result, intermittent energy resources, such as wind- and solar power, have become increasingly popular. However, their energy production varies over time, both in the short- and long term. Hydropower plants are therefore utilized as a regulating resource more frequently to maintain a balance between production and consumption on the electrical grid. This means that they must be operated away from the design point, also known as the best-efficiency-point (BEP), and often are operated at part-load (PL) with a lower power output. Moreover, some plants are expected to provide a spinning reserve, also referred to as speed-no-load (SNL), to respond rapidly to power shortages. During this operating condition, the turbine rotates without producing any power. During the above mentioned off-design operating conditions, the flow rate is restricted by the closure of the guide vanes. This changes the absolute velocity of the flow and increases the swirl, which is unfavorable. The flow field can be described as chaotic, with separated regions and recirculating fluid. Shear layer formation between stagnant- and rotating flow regions can be an origin for rotating flow structures. Examples are the rotating-vortex-rope (RVR) found during PL operation and the vortical flow structures in the vaneless space during SNL operation, which can cause the flow between the runner blades to stall, also referred to as rotating stall. The flow structures are associated with pressure pulsations throughout the turbine, which puts high stress on the runner and other critical parts and shortens the turbine's lifetime. Numerical models of hydraulic turbines are highly coveted to investigate the detrimental flow inside the hydraulic turbines' different sections at off-design operating conditions. They enable the detailed study of the flow and the origin of the instabilities. This knowledge eases the design and assessment of mitigation techniques that expand the turbines' operating range, ultimately enabling a wider implementation of intermittent energy resources on the electrical grid and a smoother transition to a fossil-free society. This thesis presents the numerical study of the Porjus U9 model, a scaled-down version of the 10 MW prototype Kaplan turbine located along the Luleå river in northern Sweden. The distributor contains 20 guide vanes, 18 stay vanes and the runner is 6-bladed. The numerical model is a geometrical representation of the model turbine located at Vattenfall Research and Development in Älvkarleby, Sweden. The commercial software ANSYS CFX 2020 R2 is used to perform the numerical simulations. Firstly, the draft tube cone section of the U9 model is numerically studied to investigate the sensitivity of a swirling flow to the GEKO (generalized kω) turbulence model. The GEKO model aims to consolidate different eddy viscosity turbulence models. Six free coefficients are changeable to tune the model to flow conditions and obtain results closer to an experimental reference without affecting the calibration of the turbulence model to basic flow test cases. Especially, the coefficients affecting wall-bounded flows are of interest. This study aims to analyze if the GEKO model can be used to obtain results closer to experimental measurements and better predict the swirling flow at PL operation compared to other eddy viscosity turbulence models. Results show that the near-wall- and separation coefficients predict a higher swirl and give results closer to experimentally obtained ones. Secondly, a simplified version of the U9 model is investigated at BEP and PL operating conditions and includes one distributor passage with periodic boundary conditions, the runner and the draft tube. The flow is assumed axisymmetric upstream of the runner, hence the single distributor passage. Previous studies of hydraulic turbines operating at PL show difficulties predicting the flow's tangential velocity component as it is often under predicted. Therefore, a parametric analysis is performed to investigate which parameters affect the prediction of the tangential velocity in the runner domain. Results show that the model predicts the flow relatively well at BEP but has problems at PL; the axial velocity is overpredicted while the tangential is underpredicted. Moreover, the torque is overpredicted. The root cause for the deviation is an underestimation of the head losses. Another contributing reason is that the runner extracts too much swirl from the flow, hence the low tangential velocity and the high torque. Sensitive parameters are the blade clearance, blade angle and mass flow. Finally, the full version of the U9 model is analyzed at SNL operation, including the spiral casing, full distributor, runner and draft tube. During this operating condition, the flow is not axisymmetric; vortical flow structures extend from the vaneless space to the draft tube and the flow stalls between the runner blades. A mitigation technique with independent control of each guide vane is presented and implemented in the model. The idea is to open some of the guidevanes to BEP angle while keeping the remaining ones closed. The aim is to reduce the swirl and prevent the vortical flow structures from developing. Results show that the flow structures are broken down upstream the runner and the rotating stall between the runner blades is reduced, which decreases the pressure- and velocity fluctuations. The flow down stream the runner remains mainly unchanged.