A hydrokinetic turbine produces power using the kinetic energy of water flowing through a river or canal. The current study was carried out on a modified Savonius hydrokinetic turbine to study the effect of Reynolds number and differential head–based Froude number on the performance of the turbine. The experiments were carried out for seven different flow velocities in a laboratory canal. Different Reynolds numbers and differential head–based Froude numbers were achieved by altering the flow velocity using a variable frequency drive (VFD) pump. ANOVA analysis was carried out to evaluate the effect of Reynolds number and differential head–based Froude number on the performance parameters of the turbine such as coefficient of torque, coefficient of power, torque, and power. From the ANOVA analysis, it is observed that Reynolds number has a significant influence on the torque and power output of the turbine; however, its effect on coefficient of torque and coefficient of power is not significant, while the effect of differential head–based Froude number is significant for all four performance parameters like torque, power, coefficient of torque, and coefficient of power. Also, the results indicate that the trend of the variation of the coefficient of power almost matches that of the differential head–based Froude number. This indicates that small variation in the coefficient of power with flow velocity occurs due to variation in water level across the rotor, which is presented in the current work as differential head–based Froude number.
Patel et al. (2026) studied this question.