A study of thermal nonequilibrium effects in low-pressure wet-steam turbines using a blade-to-blade time-marching technique

A theoretical analysis of the wet-steam flow in the low pressure cylinder of a 500 MW steam turbine using a blade-to-blade time-marching computer program is described. The calculating method can compute most types of wet-steam flow found in LP turbines, including those involving both primary and secondary nucleations in transonic and supersonic blading with shock waves. In particular, condensing flows in highly staggered rotor tip sections can be computed without difficulty. Extensive results are presented showing the effect of departures from thermal equilibrium on the blade surface pressure and velocity distributions, the blade outlet relative flow angle, the mass flow coefficient and the thermodynamic loss coefficient. On the basis of the analysis, recommendations are made concerning the application of nonequilibrium wet-steam theory to steam turbine design.