STEAM TURBINES

TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

The author of this book used the spellings "aline," "gage," and "hight" for the conventional spellings "align," "gauge," and "height." As they are used consistently and do not affect the sense, they have been left unchanged. Some obvious typos and misspellings that do not affect the sense have been silently corrected. The following substantive typographical errors have been corrected: "being" to "bearing" (p. 68); "FIG. 50" to "FIG. 56" (p. 91), and "Fig. 2" to "Fig. 73" (p. 159). Two other likely errors have been left as queries: lead/load on p. 142 and beating/heating on p. 177. These five changes are indentified by dotted red underlining with pop-up titles.

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INTRODUCTION

This issue of the Power Handbook attempts to give a compact manual for the engineer who feels the need of acquainting himself with steam turbines. To accomplish this within the limits of space allowed, it has been necessary to confine the work to the description of a few standard types, prepared with the assistance of the builders. Following this the practical experience of successful engineers, gathered from the columns of Power, is given. It is hoped that the book will prove of value to all engineers handling turbines, whether of the described types or not.

CONTENTS

1. The Curtis Steam Turbine in Practice 1
2. Setting the Valves of the Curtis Turbine 31
3. Allis-Chalmers Steam Turbine 41
4. Westinghouse-Parsons Turbine 58
5. Proper Method of Testing a Steam Turbine 112
6. Testing a Steam Turbine 137
7. Auxiliaries for Steam Turbines 154
8. Trouble with Steam Turbine Auxiliaries 172

I. THE CURTIS STEAM TURBINE IN PRACTICE[1]

"Of the making of books there is no end." This seems especially true of steam-turbine books, but the book which really appeals to the operating engineer, the man who may have a turbine unloaded, set up, put in operation, and the builders' representative out of reach before the man who is to operate it fully realizes that he has a new type of prime mover on his hands, with which he has little or no acquaintance, has not been written. There has been much published, both descriptive and theoretical, about the turbine, but so far as the writer knows, there is nothing in print that tells the man on the job about the details of the turbine in plain language, and how to handle these details when they need handling. The operating engineer does not care why the moving buckets are made of a certain curvature, but he does care about the distance between the moving bucket and the stationary one, and he wants to know how to measure that distance, how to alter the clearance, if necessary, to prevent rubbing. He doesn't care anything about the area of the step-bearing, but he does want to know the way to get at the bearing to take it down and put it up again, etc.

The lack of literature along this line is the writer's apology for what follows. The Curtis 1500-kilowatt steam turbine will be taken first and treated "from the ground up."

On entering a turbine plant on the ground floor, the attention is at once attracted by a multiplicity of pumps, accumulators and piping. These are called "auxiliaries" and will be passed for the present to be taken up later, for though of standard types their use is comparatively new in power-plant practice, and the engineer will find that more interruptions of service will come from the