Abstract: In order to find a turbulence model suitable for numerical calculation of hydraulic performance of the siphon outlet conduit in a large-scale low-head pumping station, a transparent conduit model experiment method is used to conduct experimental studies on the siphon outlet conduit in the large-scale low-head pumping station in this study. The head loss of the flow through the conduit is measured, and the flow regime in the conduit analyzed. Further, based on the grid-independence analysis, some of the commonly-used turbulence models, including the one-equation turbulence model (S-A turbulence model), two-equation turbulence models (k-ε turbulence model and k-ω turbulence model), and Reynolds Stress turbulence model, are selected to numerically simulate the hydraulic performances of the siphon outlet conduit with three-dimensional (3D) turbulent flow, and the numerical calculation results are compared with the model test results of the conduit. The research results show that the two-equation turbulence model is superior to the one-equation turbulence model and the Reynolds Stress turbulence model in the calculation of the head loss of the siphon outlet conduit. The relative errors of the head loss calculated by the three two-equation turbulence models (i.e. standard k-ε turbulence model, realizable k-ε turbulence model and SST k-ω turbulence model) are less than 3%. Among them, the flow field calculated by the Standard k-ε turbulence model is the most consistent with the model test results.