Turbines

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Turbines
Contents
i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. Introduction Power From Water Impulse Turbines: The Pelton Wheel Reaction Turbines: The Lawn Sprinkler Energy Relations References

Introduction
The word turbine was coined in 1828 by Claude Burdin (1790-1873) to describe the subject of an engineering competition for a water power source. It comes from Latin turbo, turbinis, meaning a "whirling" or a "vortex," and by extension a child's top or a spindle. Defining a turbine as a rotating machine for deriving power from water is not quite exact. The precise definition is a machine in which the water moves relatively to the surfaces of the machine, as distinguished from machines in which such motion is secondary, as with a cylinder and piston. The common water wheel is a rotating machine, but not a turbine. We shall discuss many types of water -driven prime movers in this article, but mainly turbines, for which will explain the fundamental theory. Water in nature is a useful source of energy. It comes directly in mechanical form, without the losses involved in heat engines and fuel cells, and no fuels are necessary. Solar heat evaporates water, mostly from the oceans, where it is mixed into the lower atmosphere by turbulence, and moved by the winds. Through meteorological processes, it falls on the earth as precipitation, on the oceans, but also on high ground, where it makes its way downhill to the sea, with evaporative and other losses. A cubic metre of water can give 9800 J of mechanical energy for every metre it descends, and a flow of a cubic metre per second in a fall of 1 m can provide 9800 W, or 13 hp. The efficiency of hydraulic machines can be made close to 1, so that all this energy is available, and it can be converted to electrical energy with an efficiency of over 95%. The disadvantage of energy from water is that it is strictly limited, and widely distributed in small amounts that are difficult to exploit. Only where a lot of water is gathered in a large river, or where descent is rapid, is it possible to take economic advantage. Most of these possibilities are quite small, as are the hydropower sites along the Fall Line on the Atlantic coast of the United States, or on the slopes of the Pennines in England. These were developed in the early days of the Industrial Revolution, but are now abandoned because their scale is not the scale of modern industry. Each site provided a strictly limited horsepower, and in the autumns the water often failed. For expansion and reliability, all were rapidly replaced by steam engines fueled by coal, which were expandable and reliable. Today, hydropower usually means a large project on a major river, with extensive environmental damage. The fall in head is provided by a dam, which creates a lake that will be of limited life, since geological processes hate lakes and destroy them as rapidly as possible. Niagara Falls is an excellent example of a hydropower site. It is unique; there is only one, and hardly anything else similar. The Niagara River carries the entire discharge of the Great Lakes, about 5520 m 3/s, and the concentrated elevation difference is about 50 m. The visible falls carry nothing like this much water today; most is used for power. Hydropower could destroy the falls as a sublime view; we are lucky it has not. The power available from this discharge and drop is 3.6 x 10 6 hp. The figures given in the encyclopedia for the power available from the Canadian and U.S. power projects on each side add up to considerably more than this. Perhaps they use more drop, or perhaps they are just optimistic. The first large-scale hydropower development here was in 1896. This was also the site of Nikola Tesla's two-phase plant that pioneered polyphase power in the U.S.

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For comparison, the more than 190 million registered motor vehicles in the U.S. probably have an aggregate power capability of neary 2 x 10 10 hp, equivalent to 5000 Niagaras. Hydropower and increasing population cannot coexist; the limits of hydropower are fixed and obvious. It is really too bad that small-scale hydropower projects are no longer economically viable. In 1920, about 40% of electric power in the U.S. came from hydropower; in 1989 that percentage had dropped to 9.5%. It was not that hydropower had decreased in absolute terms, but had remained roughly constant while the total market had expanded greatly.

Power From Water

To get power from water, it must be extracted as the water is lowered in elevation. That there is a current in a stream is obvious; it comes from the open-channel flow of the water under the influence of gravity. If you hold a paddle-wheel in the stream, it will be rotated and you can extract power from it. This is an elementary impulse turbine, a rotating machine acted upon by the force of moving water. This is not a copious source of power, but at least it does not involve the disturbance of the stream, which was always of intererest to the neighbors. Wheels like this are called undershot, and were very common at all dates, because they can be used without disturbing the stream. These were the typical Roman water mills, described in Vitruvius. There are, however, very few relics remaining from these mills, and their history is often seriously misrepresented. The wheels drove horizontal millstones through gearing, usually by a face and a lantern gear. All parts of a mill were made of wood, except for small pieces of metal where desirable. Roman water mills were suggested by the irrigation machinery that had been long used in the arid Near East to raise water. The Egyptian shaduf, a counterweighted pot, was millennia old, raising water by about 2 m, and sometimes arranged in cascade. This was not, of course, a source of energy but a consumer of it, though it made the most of human effort. A much later development was the chain of pots, saqiya or Persian wheel, that rotated to raise pots of water to a height, where they were automatically emptied into an aqueduct as they rotated. This could be operated by man or beast, but some ingenious person fitted the rim of the wheel with vanes or paddles. When dipped into the current, they rotated the wheel with sufficient force to raise the pots with no assistance. This was the remarkable noria, probably the first application of water power, developed in the fourth century BCE at an unknown location. The Syrian city of Hama, 75 km inland from the Mediterranean, received its water from aqueducts filled by norias on the River Orontes. Famous norias also were built in Portugal. An outstanding water-raising project that should be more widely known was the Artificio of Juanelo Turriano (? 1585) at Toledo. Toledo is 600 m above the Rio Tajo, and for centuries water had been laboriously carried up in leather bags on the backs of mules. Turriano built an undershot wheel on the river that was equipped as a noria, filling a basin on the bank. By means of reciprocating rods, a bucket filled from this basin was rocked about an axis, tipping its water down a pipe into a following bucket. This was continued up the slope to the city, each bucket rocking and alternately filling and tipping into the next, in a mechanical bucket brigade to the top, doing the work of 600 mules. These undershot mills were very sensitive to water level. To remedy this difficulty where water level varied, wheels were mounted on pontoons that were moored in the stream. Usually, the wheel was set between two boats, where the bearings would be satisfactory and the water velocity the greatest. Mill boats were used on the Guadalquivir at Cdob, since the river level was quite variable with the season. Mill boats were also used on the Thames in London, and beneath the Grand Pont in Paris, as well as at Kn on the Rhine. If they were moored in the arches of a bridge they could take advantage of the higher current there. The openings in medieval bridges were usually small and inadequate, favoring this application. The invention of the floating mill is traditionally ascribed to an emergency measure of the Roman general Belisaurius in 537, while defending Rome from an Ostrogothic siege. If you were permitted to construct a weir, and usually this involved an extended legal wrangle over navigation rights, you could make available a few feet of drop all in one place. If you made a spillway, you would have some rapid water at its base to put a paddle wheel in. An alternative was to make the wheel move in a closely-fitting shroud, or to provide it with buckets, so that the water would by its weight press down the paddles. This is a completely different principle than the impulse machine, though many machines derived energy from both

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sources. With care, most of the energy of the descending water could be gathered, a distinctly more efficient operation than any available type of impulse machine. Later, well-designed wheels with the water applied at some height less than the wheel diameter were called breast-shot wheels because the water entered part way up the diameter. A wheel of large diameter was usually necessary to provide sufficient power at the desired slow speed. Breast wheels were the most common type of mill wheel, even into the 20th century, since they were both efficient and well suited to moderate heads. The great weir on the River Dee at Chester supplied a head for the city's mills for many years. Despite many orders for its destruction, it has lasted to the present. At Exeter in Devon, there was great opposition to Countess Wear (an alternative spelling) built across the Exe by the Countess of Devon that facilitated the collection of traditional tolls on river traffic, as well as head for a mill. There were other weirs on this small river, each supplying a mill, and a very early navigation canal was built to bypass the weirs. Boats were often dragged upstream past a weir on water temporarily released by a flash gate. Locks were a more recent affair, and now permit easy passage without a waste of water. Tidal mills were also built in favorable locations. Sometimes the rising and falling tidal streams in an estuary could work an undershot wheel. More commonly, a tidal basin was filled at high tide and then emptied past the wheel at low tide, giving two periods of power a day for several hours in most places. The times of day were variable, but were at least predictable. Tidal mills were on a much smaller scale than today's tidal power schemes. If the water was available at a sufficiently high level, perhaps through a canal or flume from an upstream point, it could be introduced near the top of the wheel. These were overshot wheels and, like breast wheels, used the weight of the water only, and were quite efficient. Overshot wheels were used by the Romans wherever sufficient head was available. At Barbegal, near Arles in southern France, a double row of 16 overshot wheels, each 9 ft in diameter and 3 ft wide, was applied to flour milling. This installation could provide flour for 80,000 people. At Laxey, on the Isle of Man, an overshot wheel of 70 ft diameter, rotating at 2.5 rpm and developing 175 hp, was fed by water under pressure that rose in a masonry column and was then led to the top of the wheel in a wooden flume. The output of the wheel was used for pumping a lead mine. This "Lady Isabella" wheel was built in 1854 or 1856, and served until the mine was abandoned in 1929. The water for an overshot wheel was often applied beyond the centre line, so that the wheel rotated in the same sense as the water approached. If the water below the wheel became too high, it would retard the wheel, an effect known as back watering. It was easy to cure this by admitting the water on the other side of the centre, so the wheel revolved in the opposite direction and the water below would aid the rotation, not hinder it. The Laxey wheel was of this type, called a pitch -back wheel. Another help was ventilating buckets that had openings to aid the discharge of water. John Smeaton (1724-1792), one of the first modern Civil Engineers, and a very successful one, founder of the Smeatonian Society that later became the Institution of Civl Engineers, took great interest in improving water wheels, and in introducing cast iron in their construction, just at the time when the rotary steam engine was coming into being. Improvements in water wheels continued in the 19th century, by such engineers as Robert Fairbairn, and were brought to a high state of excellence with metal replacing most of the wood in both wheel and gearing. Since the wood around waterwheels is alternately wet and dry, it is very subject to rotting, and this was a persistent problem. The vanes, blades or buckets on a waterwheel were called floats, sometimes rungs. Water was carried to and from the wheel in a mill race. The water arrived in a head race, and left in a tail race . A head race was locally called a lade or a launder . A mill race could be called a flume in the United States, or a leat in Britain. The water was controlled by means of a sluice, sometimes redundantly called a "sluice gate." A sluice is a vertically sliding gate, often operated by rack and pinion. A penstock may be a sluice, but is also a closed channel through which water is delivered under pressure. Water wheels can be run in reverse--driven, for example, by windmills, and function as pumps. The most common water -lifting machine in Holland was the scoop wheel, very much like a breast-shot wheel run in reverse.

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These were sometimes cascaded to give a greater lift. For lesser discharges, an Archimedean screw rotated by a small four-sailed windmill could be used, called a tjasker. The Norse mill or Greek mill, was completely different, with a horizontal wheel and vertical shaft called a tirl , that turned the millstone directly, without gearing. A stream of water from a penstock was directed on the wheel, turning it by impulse. This was a very primitive mill, but a quite practical one, which appeared in about 0 CE. It was not displaced by the more elaborate Roman mill, with vertical wheel and horizontal shaft with gearing, in many places. It is really not Greek nor Norse particularly, but widely distributed in early communities. An later example was the Provenal mill from southern France. Poncelet derived a design for an impulse turbine from this model, with a horizontal metal wheel with curiously shaped floats fed by a penstock. These horizontal mills were all impulse turbines, ancestors of the Pelton wheel. Although they may bear a resemblance to Francis turbines, the resemblance is only superficial. The uncertainty of water supply could be ameliorated by a mill pond, which stored water to even out variable flows. Many mills had weir or dam, a mill pond, and a flume to supply the wheel, making a very pleasant establishment. However, protracted drought or winter frosts could bring the mill to a halt. In some cases, when a steam engine was installed, it was used to pump water up to the mill pond, instead of being applied directly to the machinery. This, of course, involved the least disturbance to the existing machinery and allowed the steam engine to be immediately applied. When renovation occurred, the opportunity was used to remove the wheel and connect the steam engine directly to the machinery. An alternative to turbines is the positive-displacement engine, in which a piston reciprocates in a cylinder, valves admitting and releasing the water. This is especially adaptable to high heads. One double stroke of the piston in effect lowers an amount of water equal to the cylinder displacement from the high reservoir to the low, extracting its potential energy. Care must be taken to cushion the shock of sudden opening and closing of valves by air chambers and other means. These column-of-water engines were extremely rare. The best known was built by Georg von Reichenbach of Bavaria to power reciprocating brine pumps. A positive displacement rotary engine like the Roots blower could easily be run in reverse on water pressure, and would, moreover, function smoothly without shock. I do not know if this has been done. Reciprocating engines have the advantage of being able to work at different speeds, which turbines can do only with difficulty. Reciprocating pumps are much more common than reciprocating engines.

Impulse Turbines: The Pelton Wheel

The impulse turbine is very easy to understand. A nozzle transforms water under a high head into a powerful jet. The momentum of this jet is destroyed by striking the runner, which absorbs the resulting force. If the velocity of the water leaving the runner is nearly zero, all of the kinetic energy of the jet has been transformed into mechanical energy, so the efficiency is high. A practical impulse turbine was invented by Lester A. Pelton (1829-1908) in California around 1870. There were high-pressure jets there used in placer mining, and a primitive turbine called the hurdy -gurdy, a mere rotating platform with vanes, had been used since the '60's, driven by such jets. Pelton also invented the split bucket, now universally used, in 1880. Pelton is a trade name for the products of the company he originated, but the term is now used generically for all similar impulse turbines. A diagram of a Pelton wheel is shown at the right. The wheel of pitch diameter D has buckets around its periphery, so spaced that the jet always strikes more than one at a time. The buckets have the form shown at the upper left, where the water enters at a splitter and is diverted to each side, where the velocity is smoothly reversed. Bucket sizes are from 2.5 to 4 times the jet diameter. The total head supplying the nozzle is h, the sum of the pressure head and the approach velocity head. The theoretical jet velocity is V = v(2gh). Let's analyze an ideal wheel, and assume that this is actually the jet velocity. The peripheral velocity of the runner is u.

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The vector diagrams at the left show how the velocity is transformed by the runner. For simplicity, we assume that all velocities are in the same straight line. The relative velocity of approach to the runner is V - u. We assume that this velocity is reversed, so that the final velocity is V - 2u. The force F on the runner is the rate of momentum change, or F = ?[V + (V - 2u)]Q = 2?(V - u)Q, where ? is the density and Q the volume rate of flow of water. The torque on the runner is T = FD/2 = ?D(V - u) Q. When the runner is stopped, the torque has its greatest value, ? DVQ. When the peripheral velocity of the runner is equal to V, the torque is zero. The torque curve is a straight line between these points. The power P = Fu or T? . In terms of u, P = 2? u(V - u)Q. By taking the derivative of P with respect to u and setting it equal to zero, we find that maximum power occurs when u = V/2, and this power is ?V 2Q/2, or ? ghQ. This is the energy content of the water from the jet, so the efficiency is unity, with all the energy of the jet turned into shaft output. For any velocity u, the efficiency is ? = 4u(V-u)/V 2. It is zero for u = 0 and for u = V. This analysis should have been clear and easy to follow. It illustrates the princple of the Pelton wheel very well, and actual wheels are not too far from ideal. When a Pelton wheel is working close to maximum efficiency, the water drops easily from the wheel, with a little turmoil, but not much velocity. As an example of an actual Pelton wheel, one worked for a time generating electricity in Southern California with the following specifications. Pitch diameter, 162" (2.06 m); operating speed, 250 rpm (26.18 rad/s); head, 2200' (670.6 m). The theoretical V is v(2gh) = 114.6 m/s, while the peripheral velocity u = 53.86 m/s. Then, 2u = 108 m/s, very close to V and probably closer to the actual jet velocity. This wheel probably developed about 60,000 hp on a flow of around 7 m 3/s. The ratio of the runner velocity u to the ideal jet velocity v(2gh) is usually denoted f . For a Pelton wheel working at maximum efficiency, f is about 0.5. The conduit bringing high-pressure water to the impulse wheel is called the penstock . This was strictly just the name of the valve, but the term has been extended to the conduit and its appurtenances as well, and is a general term for a water passage and control that is under pressure, whether it serves an impulse turbine or not.

Reaction Turbines: The Lawn Sprinkler

By contrast with the impulse turbine, reaction turbines are difficult to understand and analyze, especially the ones usually met with in practice. The modest lawn sprinkler comes to our aid, since it is both a reaction turbine, and easy to understand. It will be our introduction to reaction turbines. In the impulse turbine, the pressure change occurred in the nozzle, where pressure head was converted into kinetic energy. There was no pressure change in the runner, which had the sole duty of turning momentum change into torque. In the reaction turbine, the pressure change occurs in the runner itself at the same time that the force is exerted. The force still comes from rate of change of momentum, but not as obviously as in the impulse turbine. The duty of the lawn sprinkler is to spread water; its energy output as a turbine serves only to move the sprinkler head. It is a descendant of Hero's aeolipile, the rotating globe with two bent jets that was quite a sensation in ancient times, though this worked with steam, not water. The lawn sprinkler seems directly descended from Rev. Robert Barker's proposed mill of 1740. He used two jets at right angles to the radius. A later improvement fed water from below to balance the weight of the runner and reduce friction. Barker's mills only appeared as models, and were never commercially offered. The flow of water in a lawn sprinkler is radially outward. Water under pressure is introduced at the centre, and jets of water that can cover the area necessary issue from the ends of the arms at zero gauge pressure. The pressure decrease occurs in the sprinkler arms. Though the water is projected at an angle to the radius, the water from an operating sprinkler moves almost along a radius. If you have such a sprinkler, by all means observe it in action. The jets do not impinge on a runner; in fact, they are leaving the runner, so their momentum is not converted into force as in the impulse turbine. The force on the runner must act

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in reaction to the creation of the momentum instead, which is, of course, the origin of the name of the reaction turbine. A two-armed runner of a rotating lawn sprinkler is shown at the right. Conditions at the ends of the two arms are the same. The jet at the end of an arm is projected at an angle with a perpendicular normal to the radius from the centre of rotation, in the direction of the rotational velocity u 2 = ? r. The space velocity V 2 is the vector sum of v2 and u2, which makes an angle a with u 2. When the runner is stopped, V 2 = v2. As the runner speeds up, V2 moves closer to a radial direction. When it reaches the radial direction, there is no longer a component normal to the radius and, therefore, no accelerating torque. It is easy to see that the torque will be a maximum when the runner is stalled. To find v2 in terms of p 1, we shall use Bernoulli's theorem. However, energy is not conserved between the axial point 1 and point 2 at the end of the arm, since the water does work in passing from one point to the other. There is a reaction force of magnitude ?V 2 in the opposite direction to V2. The movement of point 2 is in the direction of u 2, so the rate of doing work is ?V 2u2cos a. Dividing by ?g to express this work as head, we find that a head of V 2u2cos a /g must be subtracted from the difference of the heads at points 2 and 1. Since z2 = z 1 , and V1 = 0 at point 1, and p = 0 at point 2 (we are using gauge pressures), we get V 22/2g = p1/?g - V 2u2 cos a/g. From the vector triangles, we find that (dropping the subscript 2 for the moment) V2 = u 2 + v 2 - 2uv cos(180 - ) = u2 + v 2 + 2uv cos , and also that V cosa = v cos + u. Substituting for V2 and V2cosa in the above equation, we find that (v 2 - u 2)/2g = p1/? g = h, which simplifies to v 2 = 2gh + u2 . In this equation, h is the supply head, which may include approach velocity if it is to be considered. Now we can find everything we need as a function of u2, or of the angular velocity ? . In particular the component of V perpendicular to the radius is V' = V cos a = v cos + u. The corresponding reaction force is obtained by multiplying by ? , and by the total discharge Av, where A is the total area of the jets on all arms. The torque, then, is T = -?Avr(v cos + u), where v = v(2gh + u 2) and u = ? r. A lawn sprinkler I have at hand has r = 75 mm, = 110 and A = 8 mm 2. Let us first find the free -running speed for a supply head of 300 cm. The free-running speed corresponds to zero torque, when V is radial, or when v cos + u = 0. Here, this condition is u = 0.342v, or v2 = 8.549u 2. Since v2 = 2gh + u2 , we have 7.549u2 = (2)(980) (300), or u = 279 cm/s. Since r = 7.5 cm, ? = 37.2 rad/s, or n = 355 rpm (n is the usual symbol for angular velocity in rpm). This value will not be reached, of course, due to friction, but it is very reasonable. Under a tenth of the head, the free-running speed would be 112 rpm. Let us assume that the actual speed under 300 cm head is 200 rpm, and find the corresponding torque. For this runner, T = 0.60v(0.342v - u) cm-dyne. 200 rpm is 20.94 rad/s, so u = 157 cm/s. Then, we find that v = 783 cm/s, from which T = 5.17 x 10 4 cm-dyne, or 53 cm-gm, as it is usually stated. This will be the torque required to turn the runner at that speed. The discharge Q = Av = (0.08)(783) = 62.6 cm 3/s, or 3.76 liters/min. At stall, v = 767 cm/s, and the stall torque will be 12.07 x 10 4 cm-dyne, or 123 cm-gm. Note that the rotation of the runner causes v to be larger than it would be without the rotation; the runner is acting as a centrifugal pump. The water is projected with a radial velocity of V sin a = v sin = 0.940v. Let's assume that it is projected horizontally, although in the actual sprinkler the jets are aimed upwards a little. Then the radial velocity will be 736 cm/s. If the height of the runner is 1 m above the ground, it is easy to calculate that the water will be

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projected to a radius of 3.3 m. If the water were spread uniformly over this disc, the watering rate would be 6.6 mm per hour. If we were more interested in power than in watering, could be made 180, and the area of the jets could be increased, partly by multiplying the number of jets. If the angular velocity of the runner could be such that v = u, the water would drop directly down, and the efficiency of the turbine would be a maximum. However, we must have v2 = 2gh + u2, so this condition cannot exist. All that can be done is to make u as large as possible, but this is not very satisfactory. This is the reason Barker's mills are not often seen these days. An interesting related problem is the "reverse sprinkler," also known as Feynman's sprinkler, though he did not originate the problem or give a solution (see Reference). Imagine a sprinkler like the one described above immersed in water and suppose the water is sucked out of it. There is a slight impulse towards the side where the water enters when flow begins, and an equal reverse impulse when the flow stops, but for an ideal fluid there is no steady torque. It is interesting to analyze this problem. The momentum given to the fluid on entry is the same that is given up when the fluid turns and moves into the supply pipe, so there is no net torque. There was a considerable amount of argument concerning this problem in the 1980's, but the confusion over it is much older.

Energy Relations
To analyze power turbines, we'll use Bernoulli's theorem in the form derived for the water sprinkler, written between the inlet and outlet of the turbine runner. This is (p 1/?g + z 1 + V 12/2g) - (p2/? g + z 2 + V 22/2g) = hL + (V 1 u1cos a 1 - V2u 2cosa 2)/g. The terms on the right are the head loss in the supply piping, h L , and the utilized head h" which depends on conditions at inlet and outlet. There is a velocity triangle at inlet and outlet relating V, u and v, as in the case of the lawn sprinkler. There, we could use it to eliminate V from this equation in order to find v. Practical turbines cannot be well described by a single streamline, but we can still think of average values of V1 and V 2 , u1 and u 2, and the other quantities, and find out how they vary with the size of the turbine, the rotational speed, the developed horsepower, and the applied head. In fact, the theory of practical turbines is difficult, so tests are actually used to determine the variables under study. Experiments are made on models, and scaled up to full size, so understanding the relation between model parameters and full-size parameters is important. The principle of a power turbine is to direct the incoming water tangentially by stationary vanes, and then to have it pass to the moving runner where it exerts forces on the runner vanes while its pressure decreases from the input head to zero. Since the pressure varies, the turbine must flow full. The exit velocity is not zero, but most of the kinetic energy can be recovered in a draft tube where the water is decelerated. In 1826, Bnoit Fourneyron (18021867) developed an outward-flow turbine that was efficient, but the mechanical arrangements were poor, since the runner was on the outside. Jean V. Poncelet (1788-1867) designed an inward-flow turbine in about 1820. S. B. Howd took the design to the U.S. and patented it in 1838 (I do not know if he made any improvments, or just filched the idea). In 1849, James B. Francis (1815-1892) improved Howd's turbine, where the water entered horizontally through guide vanes that gave them a whirl, then passed into the runner and was diverted downwards. His hydraulic experiments on turbines at Lowell, Massachusetts, are famous. James Thomson of Belfast, brother of Lord Kelvin, made important improvements to the inward radial flow turbine, in the shape of the vanes, control, and other matters. Practical reaction turbines are now all inward-flow machines. The water enters through a snail-like scroll case, and exits below near the axis. The runner of a Francis turbine is illustrated at the left. Its basic dimension is the diameter D. The shape of the vanes cannot be well represented, but they are designed for smooth flow at the design speed and head of the turbine. The plan view at the right shows how the guide vanes in the stator direct the water onto the moving runner, acting like nozzles. The

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water follows the dotted path in space from the inlet at 1 to the outlet at 2. Relative to the runner, it flows parallel to the vanes, exerting the force that creates the output torque. In this diagram, it is easy to imagine the velocity triangles at input and output, which will be similar to those for the lawn sprinkler. The vertical section at the left shows that the flow is not completely radial, as it was in the earliest Francis turbines. During its passage through the runner, the water is diverted axially, and exits at the bottom of the runner. This, of course, complicates our analysis, but nothing is really fundamentally changed. The mixed flow allows a more efficient turbine by making the exit smoother. The interested reader should try to find illustrations of actual Francis runners to appreciate their complex shape. It is clear that a single streamline is not sufficient to describe their action! The distinction between radial and axial flow has a great effect on the appearance of the turbine, but it does not affect its fundamental behavior. Hydraulic turbines can be made that are almost completely axial flow, the runner taking the form of vanes perpendicular to the axis, well-described by the term propeller turbines . An example is the Kaplan turbine, invented by Victor Kaplan (1876-1934) and first put into service in 1912-13, with movable blades that rotate, or "feather," to handle different conditions, the key to making an efficient propeller turbine. In fact, the guide vanes of a Francis turbine are usually movable for the same purpose. A turbine without such adjustments will work efficiently only at its design speed and head. The water is given a swirl at the top of a Kaplan turbine that is taken out by the propeller. Torque is the rate of change of angular momentum, just as force is the rate of change of linear momentum. When a fluid exerts a torque on a turbine runner, the reaction is a change in angular momentum of the fluid. Fluid is given angular momentum by the guide vanes which, ideally, is destroyed by the torque exerted on the runner. With some machines, however, the water at the exit may still have considerable angular momentum, and the energy in this motion is energy that does not appear at the shaft. Where velocity in the exit fluid is part of the desired output (as with a fan), vanes to straighten out the flow help to recover some of the energy that would otherwise be lost. When a draft tube at the outlet of a turbine is filled with water, the pressure is less than atmospheric at the turbine outlet. This, of course, is a desired effect so that advantage can be taken of the whole drop in head even when the turbine is above the level of the tail water. In a Kaplan turbine, the effect of the runner was to reduce the pressure even more, below the vapor pressure of water at that temperature. Small bubbles of vapor were produced, and when they reached higher pressure collapsed explosively, damaging the runner. This is called cavitation and is a hazard in all hydraulic machinery where the pressure may drop sufficiently. This almost caused the failure of the Kaplan turbine, but the problem was eventually solved by taking care with the turbine setting and other details. The power developed by a turbine is P = ?gQh", where Q is the flow through the runner. The power in the inlet water is P' = ?gQh, so the efficiency of the turbine is e = h"/h. Strictly speaking, this is the hydraulic efficiency e h. The mechanical efficiency e m is the fraction of the runner power that is delivered at the shaft, lessened because of friction. Hydraulic machines have a mechanical efficiency of 0.95 to 0.98 for large machines, usually closer to the higher figure. Some of the supplied water may leak by the runner and do no work. The volumetric efficiency is ev = (Q - Q L )/Q, where QL is the leakage. This is also quite high in practical machines. The overall efficiency is e = P/? gQh, where P is the shaft power output. P is usually expressed in hp (550 ft -lb/s) or watt. 746 W = 1 hp. If f is the fraction of the runner inlet that is open, then the inlet area is A = fpDB = f pmD 2, where m = B/D. The radial velocity at inlet is written Vr = V 1 cosa 1 = C1v(2gh). Therefore, Q = AVr = K qD 2vh, which shows how Q depends on the size of the machine and the head. The power output will be P = e?gQh = e? gK qD2h 3/2 = K pD2h 3/2. The constant Kp will be the same for machines of the same design. We have already mentioned the parameter f with relation to the Pelton wheel. Using it, we can express the

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rotational speed in rpm by n = 60u/pD = (60f v(2g)/p) h1/2 /D. We note that nv(P) = const. x h 5/4 , so that the combination nvP/h 5/4 will be a constant for a particular machine, or machines similar to it. This relation between speed, power and head for a turbine is very useful. The value of the expression is called the specific speed n s, but it is not really a speed, and it should be noted that the expression is not a dimensionless number. Also, the speed and power used in it should be the speed and power for maximum efficiency, so that the constants are really constant. Even with these cautions, it is a valuable way to classify turbines. In United States practice, P is in hp and h is in feet, and ns is quoted assuming these units. In metric practice, P is in kW and h is in metre. This gives a larger ns, which can be reduced to the U.S. practice by multiplying by 0.2626. Impulse turbines have low n s, from 1 to 10. A typical value for a Pelton wheel might be 4. Francis turbines have a specific speed of from 10 to 100, while Kaplan turbines give from 100 up. These are values for well-designed, efficient machines. Of course, monsters could be made with very different specific speeds but they would not be satisfactory. If you know the head, speed and power desired, it is easy to find the general type of turbine that would prove satisfactory. Suppose you have a head of 2200 ft available, and want a 250 rpm machine delivering 60,000 hp. The specific speed will then be (250)v(60,000)/22005/4 = 4.06. This points to a Pelton wheel, and, in fact, one was used under these conditions. If you have a head of 89 ft available on the Susquehanna at Conowingo, PA, and want 54,000 hp at 81.8 rpm, then the specific speed is 69.5, clearly pointing to a Francis turbine. In the machine used, D = 18 ft. At Rock River, IL, a head of only 7 ft is available. 800 hp at 80 rpm is required. The specific speed is 199, clearly indicating a Kaplan turbine, which was installed. The maximum horsepower that can be developed can be estimated by the discharge Q and the available head. In engineering units, P max = 3.65Qh hp, where Q is in cfs and h is in feet. The speed often depends on the speed for a directly-coupled alternator. If N is the number of poles and f the frequency, then n = 60f/(P/2) = 120(f/P). For f = 60 Hz and N = 24, n = 300 rpm. Alternators have from 12 to 96 poles, usually, so rotational speeds will range from 600 rpm to 75 rpm.

References
R. L. Daugherty and J. B. Franzini, Fluid Mechanics, 6th ed. (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1965). Chapters 15 and 16 deal with turbines, but the theoretical background is scattered in several previous chapters, chiefly 6 and 14. Machines are the most difficult part of engineering fluid mechanics, but the most fascinating part. It is remarkable that the conservation laws go so far to explain turbines. J. Reynolds, Windmills and Watermills (New York: Praeger, 1970). Very well illustrated; covers all kinds of historic mills. M. Vitruvius, De Architectura (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1934. Loeb Classical Library #280). Vol II, Book X, Chapter V, pp. 304-307. S. Strandh, A History of the Machine (New York: A&W Publishers, 1979). pp. 92-108. Well-illustrated. P. N. Wilson, Water Turbines (London: HMSO, 1974). A Science Museum Booklet. Well-illustrated. A. Jenkins, An Elementary Treatment of the Reverse Sprinkler , Am. J. Phys. 72 , 1276-1282 (2004).

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Composed by J. B. Calvert Created 23 July 2003

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Last revised 28 September 2004

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