Theoretical and Experimental Investigation of a 34 Watt Radial-Inflow Steam Turbine with Partial-Admission

A micro steam turbine with a tip diameter of 15mm was designed and experimentally characterized. At the nominal mass flow rate and total-to-total pressure ratio of 2.3 kgh-1 and 2, respectively, the turbine yields a power of 34W and a total-to-static isentropic efficiency of 37%. The steam turbine is conceived as a radial-inflow, low-reaction (15%), and partial admission (21%) machine. Since the steam mass flow rate is limited by the heat provided of the system (solid oxide fuel cell), a low-reaction and high-power-density design is preferred. The partial-admission design allows for reduced losses: The turbine rotor and stator blades are prismatic, have a radial chord length of 1mm and a height of 0.59mm. Since the relative rotor blade tip clearance (0.24) is high, the blade tip leakage losses are significant. Considering a fixed steam supply, this design allows to increase the blade height, and thus reducing the losses. The steam turbine drives a fan, which operates at low Mach numbers. The rotor is supported on dynamic steam-lubricated bearings; the nominal rotational speed is 175 krpm. A numerical simulation of the steam turbine is in good agreement with the experimental results. Furthermore, a novel test rig setup, featuring extremely-thin thermocouples is investigated for an operation with ambient and hot air at 220°C. Conventional zero and one-dimensional pre-design models correlate well to the experimental results, despite the small size of the turbine blades.