Steam Turbines A Book of Instruction for the Adjustment and Operation of the Principal Types of this Class of Prime Movers

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                              STEAM TURBINES


                           A BOOK OF INSTRUCTION
                    FOR THE ADJUSTMENT AND OPERATION OF
                        THE PRINCIPAL TYPES OF THIS
                           CLASS OF PRIME MOVERS


                           COMPILED AND WRITTEN
                                    BY

                            HUBERT E. COLLINS

                               FIRST EDITION
                           Second Impression


                        McGRAW-HILL BOOK COMPANY, Inc.
                          239 WEST 39TH STREET, NEW YORK
                         6 BOUVERIE STREET, LONDON, E. C.

              Copyright, 1909, by the Hill Publishing Company

                             All rights reserved




TRANSCRIBER'S NOTES

The authors 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. Obvious typos and misspellings that did not affect the sense
have been silently corrected. The following substantive typographical
errors have also 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 transcriber queries: lead/load on p. 142
and beating/heating on p. 177.

Superscript numbers are indicated with carets: B^1. Subscript numbers
are indicated with curly braces: P{1} for P-sub-1.




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.

                                    Hubert E. Collins.
    New York, April, 1909.




CONTENTS


 CHAP.                                                PAGE

     I  The Curtis Steam Turbine in Practice             1

    II  Setting the Valves of the Curtis Turbine        31

   III  Allis-Chalmers Steam Turbine                    41

    IV  Westinghouse-Parsons Turbine                    58

     V  Proper Method of Testing a Steam Turbine       112

    VI  Testing a Steam Turbine                        137

   VII  Auxiliaries for Steam Turbines                 154

  VIII  Trouble with Steam Turbine Auxiliaries         172




I. THE CURTIS STEAM TURBINE IN PRACTICE[1]

[1] Contributed to _Power_ by Fred L. Johnson.


"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 auxiliaries than from the
turbine itself.


Builders' Foundation Plans Incomplete

It is impractical for the manufacturers to make complete foundation
drawings, as they are not familiar with the lay-out of pipes and the
relative position of other apparatus in the station.