Pelton Turbine Working, Main Parts,

Application with Diagram

What is Pelton Turbine?

It is a type of tangential flow impulse turbine used to generate electricity in the hydroelectric
power plant. This turbine was discovered by the American engineer L.A. Pelton
The energy available at the inlet of the Pelton turbine is only kinetic energy. The pressure at the inlet
and outlet of the turbine is atmospheric pressure.
 This type of turbine is used for high head.

 Main Parts
The various parts of the Pelton turbine are

1. Nozzle and Flow Regulating

Arrangement (Spear)
 Nozzle is used to increase the kinetic energy of the water that is going to strike the buckets or vanes
attached to the runner.
 The quantity of water that strikes the buckets is controlled by spear. The spear is installed inside the
nozzle and regulates the flow of water that is going to strike on the vanes of the runner. A nozzle
containing spear is shown in the figure given below.
 The spear is a conical needle present in the nozzle. It is operated by a hand wheel or automatically in
an axial direction.
 When the spear is move backward the rate of flow of water increases and when it is pushed forward
the rate of flow of water decreases.

2. Runner and Buckets

The runner with buckets is shown in the figure given below.

 Runner is a rotating part of the turbine. It is a circular disc on the periphery of which a number of
buckets evenly spaced are fixed.
 The buckets are made by two hemispherical bowl joined together. Each buckets have a wall in
between two hemispherical bowl called splitter.
 The splitter splits the jet of water striking the buckets into two equal parts and the jet of water comes
out at the outer edge of the bucket.
 The buckets are designed in such a way that the jet of water strike the buckets, deflected through 160
degree to 170 degree.
 The buckets of the Pelton turbine are made up of cast iron, cast steel bronze or stainless steel.

3. Casing:
The outer covering of the this turbine is called casing. The Pelton turbine with the casing is
shown in the figure given below.

 It prevents the splashing of the water and helps to discharge the water to the trail race. It also acts as a
safeguard in the case of any accident occurs.
 Cast iron or fabricated steel plates are used to make the casing of the Pelton Turbine.

4. Breaking jet
 When the jet of water is completely closed by pushing the spear in forward direction than the amount
of water striking the runner becomes zero. But still the runner keeps moving due to the inertia of the
runner.
 In order to stop the runner in the shortest possible time a small nozzle is provided which directs the jet
of water at the back of the vanes. This jet of water used to stop the runner of the turbine is called
breaking jet.

Working
 The water stored at high head is made to flow through the penstock and reaches the nozzle of the
Pelton turbine.
 The nozzle increases the K.E. of the water and directs the water in the form of jet.
 The jet of water from the nozzle strikes the buckets (vanes) of the runner. This made the runner to
rotate at very high speed.
 The quantity of water striking the vanes or buckets is controlled by the spear present inside the nozzle.
 The generator is attached to the shaft of the runner which converts the mechanical energy ( i.e.
rotational energy) of the runner into electrical energy.

Application
Pelton turbine is used in the hydroelectric power plant where the water available at high head i.e.
150 m to 2000 m or even more. In hydroelectric power plant it is used to drive the generator
attached to it and the generator generates the mechanical energy of the turbine into electrical
energy.

This is all about the Pelton turbine working, main parts, application with diagram. If you Find
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Francis Turbine Working Principle, Main
Parts, Diagram and Application

Introduction
Turbines using the impulse action of water are the best ones. No it’s not like that reaction turbines
are more efficient, when all of this was happening, James B. Francis, an American civil engineer
comes up with his turbine called Francis turbine. What’s different he is doing!!!
He is just mixing them up. The good’s of both the impulse and reaction turbine, say water enters
the turbine radially and exits axially. But that’s not a secret to his turbine efficiency. The magic
lies in his amazing design of blades, these blades rotate using both reaction and impulse force of
water flowing through them.

The ability of francis turbine to use both the kinetic and potential energy to produce power, shorts
out a major problem of water head availability as it could be used efficiently for head as low as
50m to as high as 400m and also for a wide range of flow rates which could be as low as 10
meter-cube per second to as high as 700 meter-cube per second.
That’s why Francis turbine is also called as mixed flow turbine. so it is now obvious that it is the
best modern turbine we have till date. It is the most widely used turbine in the hydro-power
plants. So let’s just figure it out what else it contains which makes it stand out of league of all
other turbines.

Working Principle
Francis turbine blades are designed in such a way that one portion of the blade design creates the
pressure difference between the opposite faces of the blade when water flows through it, and the
remaining portion’s blade design use the impulse force of water hitting it and this combined
action of pressure difference and impulse force generates enough power to get turbine moving at
a required speed. Thus there would be a decrease in both kinetic energy and potential energy of
water at exit, then what it has when it enters the turbine.
It is a clever design which uses both the reaction and impulse force to generate power output
better than individual impulse turbine or reaction turbines could produce at same water head
conditions.

Main Components
The Various main components of francis turbine are:
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1. Spiral casing
It is a spiral casing, with uniformly decreasing cross- section area, along the circumference. Its
decreasing cross-section area makes sure that we have a uniform velocity of the water striking the
runner blades, as we have openings for water flow in-to the runner blades from the very starting of
the casing, so flow rate would decrease as it travels along the casing. So we reduce its cross-section
area along its circumference to make pressure uniform, thus uniform momentum or velocity
striking the runner blades.

2. Stay vanes
Stay vanes and guide vanes guides the water to the runner blades. Stay vanes remain stationary at
their position and reduces the swirling of water due to radial flow, as it enters the runner blades.
Thus making turbine more efficient.

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3. Guide vanes
Water after passing through stay vanes,
glides through guide vanes to enter the
runner blades. Guide vanes can change
their angle thus can control the angle of
attack of water to the runner blades,
making them work more efficiently.
Moreover they also regulate the flow rate
of water into the runner blades thus
controlling the power output of a turbine according to the load on the turbine.
 4. Runner blades
Design of the runner blades decides how well a turbine is going to perform. So runner blades of
mixed flow turbine can be divided into two parts, the upper part of the blades use the reaction
force of water flowing through it and the lower half is in the shape of a small bucket using the
impulse action of water flowing through it. These two forces together makes the runner to rotate.

5. Draft tube
Draft tube connects the runner exit to the tail race. Its cross-section area increases along its
length, as the water coming out of runner blades is at considerably low pressure, so its expanding
cross-section area help it to recover the pressure as it flows towards tail race.

Working of Francis Turbine

Water enters the turbine through spiral casing, and starts entering the runner blades, passing
through stay vanes and guide vanes, as it moves along the length of casing the decreasing cross-
section area of the spiral casing makes sure that the pressure energy of water would remain
uniform along its length, as a portion of water is also entering the runner blades, which would
reduce its flow rate along the length of the casing. The stay vanes being stationary at their place,
removes the swirls from the water, which are generated due to flow through spiral casing and
tries it to make the flow of water more linear to be deflected by adjustable guide vanes. The angle
of guide vanes decides the angle of attack of water at the runner blades thus make sure the output
of the turbine. Guide vanes also controls the flow rate of water in-to the runner blades thus acting
according the load on the turbine. The runner blades are stationary and can-not pitch or change
their angle so it’s all about the guide vanes which controls the power output of a turbine.
Further-more the upper part of runner blades are designed in such a way that they use the pressure
difference between the opposite faces of a blade created by water flowing through it, same as the
air-foil uses the pressure difference to generate lift force. And the remaining part of the blade is
designed like a small bucket, which makes use of water’s kinetic energy. Thus runner blades
make use of both pressure energy and kinetic energy of water and rotates the runner in most
efficient way.
The water coming out of runner blades would lack both the kinetic energy and pressure energy,
so we use the draft tube to recover the pressure as it advances towards tail race, but still we
cannot recover the pressure to that extent that we can stop air to enter into the runner housing thus
causing cavitation.

What is Cavitation?
Difference in the pressure of water entering the turbine and that exists after striking the runner
blades is too high, due to this pressure difference the air molecules which are relatively at high
pressure then water coming out, enters the turbine casing in the form of bubbles. These bubble
keeps on exploding near the surface of the runner blades continuously causing a shock wave,
which produces a kind of defect at runners surface called cavitation, thus causing a serious
problem for turbines efficiency. So what can we do is to prevent blades from cavitation? One
solution is to use a really hard surface material like stainless steel or we can also go with surface
Hardening of the runner blades, to prevent them from cavitation.

Applications
 Francis turbine is the most widely used turbine in hydro-power plants to generate electricity.
 Mixed flow turbine is also used in irrigation water pumping sets to pump water from ground for
irrigation.
 It is efficient over a wide range of water head and flow rate.
 It is most efficient hydro-turbine we have till date.

What is Kaplan Turbine and How ItWorks?



What is Kaplan Turbine?

Kaplan Turbine is an axial flow reaction turbine with adjustable blades. This turbine was
developed in the year 1913 by Viktor Kaplan, who was a Austrian Professor. In his design, he
combined automatically adjusted propeller blades and automatically adjusted wicket gates to
obtain efficiency over a wide range of water flow and water level.
It is also called as propeller turbine and evolved from the Francis Turbine. It is capable of
working at low head and high flow rates very efficiently which is impossible with Francis
turbine.The working range of head at which the Kaplan turbine works more efficienlty is 10 to 70
m.

Working Principle
Since it is a reaction turbine, so the reaction force of leaving water is used to turn the runner of
the Kaplan turbine, As the water flows through the twisted blades a lift force is generated in the
opposite direction of the leaving water and that lift force causes the blades to rotate.

Main Parts
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1. Scroll Casing
It is a spiral type of casing that has decreasing cross section area. The water first enters into the
scroll casing and then it moves through it to the guide vanes and finally to the runner blades. It
protects the runner, runner blades guide vanes and other internal parts of the turbine from an
external damage.

2. Guide Vanes and Guide Mechanism

Guide vanes are used to direct the water to the runner blades smoothly by decreasing its swirl
velocity. If guide vanes is absent than the turbine can not work efficiently and its efficiency
decreases. The guides are adjustable in Kaplan turbine. Its opening and closing depends upon the
demand of power requirement. In case of more power output requirements, it opens wider to allow
more water to hit the blades of the rotor and when low power output requires it closes itself to cease
the flow of water.

3. Runner and Runner Blades

Runner is the rotating part of the turbine or we can say that it is the heart of the Kaplan turbine.
Its shaft is connected to the shaft of the generator. The runner of the this turbine has a large boss
on which its blades are attached and the the blades of the runner is adjustable to an optimum
angle of attack for maximum power output. The blades of the Kaplan turbine has twist along its
length.

Why twist is given to the blades of the runner in Kaplan turbine?

The runner blades has twist along its length in order to have always optimum angle of attack for
all cross section of blades to achieve greater efficiency.

4. Draft Tube
It is a tube which is used to increases the pressure of the fluid or water that exits the turbine. It
has increasing cross section area. Draft tube is used only in reaction turbine. It increases the
pressure of the water that leaves the runner blades. Since the water at exit of the turbine has very
low pressure and if its pressure is not increased than the back flow of the tail race water takes
which can damage the turbine. So to increase the pressure of the exiting water we uses draft tube.
It converts the kinetic energy of the water into pressure energy as it passes through draft tube and
the pressure of the water increases. The draft tube has to increases the pressure of the water upto
such an extent that it must always greater than the pressure of tail race water and prevents the
 back flow of water from the tail race to the turbine. If it does not happens than cavitation may
results and causes damage to the turbine.

Working
The water from the pen-stock enters into the scroll casing. The water moves into the scroll casing
and the guide vanes directs the water from the casing to the blades of the runner. The vanes are
adjustable and can adjust itself according to the requirement of flow rate. As the water moves
over the blades it starts rotating due to reaction force of the water. The blades in the Kaplan
turbine is also adjustable. From the runner blades, the water enters into the draft tube where its
pressure energy and kinetic energy decreases. Actually here the K.E. is gets converted into
pressure energy results in increased pressure of the water. Finally the water discharged to the trail
race. The rotation of the turbine is used to rotate the shaft of generator for electricity production
and for some other mechanical work.

Advantages
 It can work more efficiently at low water head and high flow rates as compared with other types of
turbines.
 It is smaller in size.
 It is easy to construct and space requirement is less.
 The Efficiency of Kaplan turbine is very high as compares with other hydraulic turbine.

Disadvantages
Cavitation is the major problem in this turbine. Use of draft tube and proper material generally
stainless steel for the runner blades may reduce the cavitation problem to a greater extent.

Application
This turbine is used in power generation (mostly electricity) where water is available at low head
and at higher flow rates.

What are Different Types of Turbine?

What is Turbine?
A turbine is a mechanical device which extracts energy from a moving fluid and converts it into
useful work. The turbines are basically used to produce electricity.

Main Parts of a Turbine

1. Nozzle: It guides the steam to flow in designed direction and velocity.
2. Runner: it is the rotating part of the turbine and blades are attached to the runner.
3. Blades: It is that part of the turbine on which the fast moving fluid strikes and rotates the runner.
4. Casing: It is the outer air tight covering of the turbine which contains the runner and blades. It
protects the internal parts of the turbine.

Working Principle of a Turbine

1. A fast moving fluid (it may be water, gas, steam or wind) is made to strike on the blades of the
turbine.
2. As the fluid strikes the blades, it rotates the runner. Here the energy of the moving fluid is converted
into rotational energy.
3. A generator is coupled with the shaft of the turbine. With the rotation of the runner of the turbine, the
shaft of the generator also rotates. The generator converts the mechanical energy of the runner into
electrical energy.

Types of Turbine

Basically turbines are classified into four types

1. Water turbine
2. Steam turbine
3. Gas turbine
4. Wind turbine
Here the same working principle that is discussed above is applied to all types of turbine.

Water Turbine
A turbine that extracts energy from moving water and converts it into electrical energy, is called
water turbine or hydraulic turbine.

Types of Hydraulic Turbine

The hydraulic turbines are classified on the following basis
1. According to The Type of Energy
Available at Inlet.
(i). Impulse Turbine: If the energy available at the inlet of the turbine is only kinetic energy, the
turbine is known as impulse turbine.
(ii). Reaction Turbine: If the energy available at the inlet of the turbine is kinetic energy as well
as pressure energy, the turbine is known as reaction turbine.

2. According to the Direction of Flow

(i). Tangential Flow Turbine: If the water flows along the tangent of the runner, the Turbine is
known as tangential flow turbine. For Example: Pelton turbine.

(ii). Radial Flow Turbine: If the water flows in the radial direction through the runner, the
turbine is called radial flow turbine.
(iii). Axial Flow Turbine: If the water flows through the runner along the direction parallel to the
axis of rotation of the runner the turbine is called axial flow turbine.

(iv). Mixed Flow Turbine: If the water flows through the runner in the radial direction but leaves
in the direction parallel to the axis of rotation of the runner, the turbine is called mixed flow
turbine. For example: Kaplan Turbine
3. According to the Head at the Inlet of
Turbine
(i). High Head Turbine: The net head varies in this turbine is from 150 m to 2000 m or even
more. It requires small quantity of water. Eg: pelton turbine.
(ii). Medium Head Turbine: in this turbine, the net head varies from 30 m to 150 m. It requires
moderate quantity of water. Eg: Francis turbine.
(iii). Low Head Turbine: In low head turbines, the net head is less than 30 m. it requires large
quantity of water. Eg: Kaplan turbine.

4. According to the Specific Speed of the

Turbine
(i). Low Specific Speed Turbine: it has specific speed less than 50. Eg: pelton turbine.

(ii). Medium Specific Speed Turbine: The specific speed varies from 50 to 250. Eg Francis
turbine.

(iii). High Specific Speed Turbine: The specific speed is more than 250. Eg: Kaplan turbine.
 Difference Between Impulse and Reaction
Turbine
In this article we will discuss about all the major difference between impulse and reaction turbine.
These both types of turbine are used in power plants for the generation of electricity. Instead of their
same work of producing electricity, they are differing from each other in much respect. Here will
discuss about various differences among them in detail.

S.no Impulse Turbine Reaction Turbine

In the reaction turbine, first the steam flows through

In impulse turbine the steam flows through the nozzle the guide mechanism and then flows through the
1. and strike on the moving blades. moving blades.

The steam glides over the moving blades with both

2. Steam strikes on the buckets with kinetic energy. pressure and kinetic energy.

During the flow of steam through moving blades, its During the flow of steam through moving blades its
3. pressure remains constant. pressure reduces.

The steam may or may not be admitted to the whole The steam must be admitted over the whole
4. circumference. circumference.

5. The blades of impulse turbine are symmetrical. The blades of reaction turbine are not symmetrical.

While gliding over the blades the relative velocity of In reaction turbine, while gliding over the blades the
6. steam remains constant. relative velocity of steam increases.

For the same power developed, the number of stages For the same power developed, the number of stages
7. required is less. required is more.

The direction of steam flow is radial to the direction of The direction of steam flow is radial and axial to the
8. turbine wheel. turbine wheel.

9. It requires less maintenance work. It requires more maintenance work.

 10. It is suitable for low discharge. It is suitable for medium and high discharge.

Francis turbine, Kaplan turbine etc. are the examples

of reaction
11. Pelton Wheel is the example of impulse turbine. turbine.

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Difference Between Impulse and Reaction

Turbine
Comparison Between Impulse and Reaction
Turbine
 In impulse turbine the steam flows through the nozzle and strikes on the moving blades. In reaction
turbine steam first flows through the guide mechanism and then flows through the moving blades.
 In impulses turbine, steam strikes on the moving blades with kinetic energy only. But in the reaction
turbine, the steam which glides over the moving blades possesses both pressure and kinetic energy.
 In impulse turbine the pressure of steam remains constant during its flow through the moving blades.
But in reaction turbine, the pressure of steam reduces during its flow through the moving blades.
 In impulse turbine the steam may or may not be admitted to the whole circumference. In reaction
turbine the steam must be admitted to the whole circumference.
 The blades of the impulse turbine are symmetrical where as in reaction turbine it is not symmetrical.
 The relative velocity of steam in impulse turbine remains constant but in Reaction turbine it increases
while gliding over the blades.
 For the same power developed, the number of stages required in impulse turbine is less where as in
reaction turbine the number of stages required is more.
 The steam flow in impulse turbine is radial to the turbine wheel where as in reaction turbine steam
flow is radial and axial to the turbine wheel.
 If we talk about the maintenance work, then impulse turbine has less maintenance work as compared
with the reaction turbine.
 Impulse turbine is suitable where discharge is low and reaction turbine is suitable for medium and
high discharge.
 Pelton wheel is the example of impulse turbine whereas Francis turbine, Kaplan turbine etc. are the
examples of reaction turbine