Computational fluid dynamics analysis of several designs of a Curtis wheel

In small steam turbines, sometimes the efficiency is not as important as the cost of manufacturing the turbine. The Curtis wheel is a solution allowing to develop a low output turbine of compact size and with a low number of stages. This paper presents three fully dimensional computational fluid dynamics cases of a Curtis stage with full and partial admission. A 1 MW steam turbine with a Curtis stage have been designed. The fully admitted stage reaches a power of over 3 MW. In order to limit its output power to about 1 MW, the partial admission was applied. Five variants of the Curtis stage partial admission were analyzed. Theoretical relations were used to predict the partial admission losses which were compared with a three-dimensional simulations. An analysis of the flow and forces acting on rotor blades was also performed.