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Modern Engineering Thermodynamics

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13.8 The Development of the Steam Turbine 475<br />

River<br />

Roman paddlewheel impulse turbine (ca. 70 BC)<br />

Heron’s reaction stream turbine<br />

(ca. 1st century AD)<br />

FIGURE 13.24<br />

Roman paddlewheel impulse turbine (ca. 70 BC) and Heron’s reaction steam turbine (ca. 1st century AD).<br />

Steam inlet<br />

Nozzle<br />

Turbine shaft<br />

Steam<br />

outlet<br />

Steam<br />

outlet<br />

Rotation<br />

Steam<br />

inlet<br />

Turbine wheel<br />

Blades<br />

Each pair of blades<br />

forms a converging<br />

nozzle<br />

(a)<br />

(b)<br />

FIGURE 13.25<br />

Characteristics of (a) impulse and (b) reaction turbines.<br />

rotor to spin rapidly, like blowing on a pinwheel. In a reaction turbine, the rotation is caused by a reaction force<br />

generated by the momentum change of the fluid accelerating through nozzles attached to the rotor itself (like<br />

the nozzles on a lawn sprinkler). The nozzles in a rotor-type reaction turbine are not the same as the simple axisymmetric<br />

cylindrical jet producing nozzles of the impulse turbine. Instead, they are two-dimensional nozzlelike<br />

channels formed in the passage between the blades of each row. The characteristics of impulse and reaction<br />

turbines are shown in Figure 13.25.<br />

It can be easily shown from the momentum balance equations of fluid mechanics that the maximum<br />

energy conversion efficiency of an impulse turbine occurs when the fluid enters the rotor blades parallel to<br />

the direction of motion of the blades and with a velocity equal to exactly twice the blade average velocity

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