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The Impact Of Jet Apparatus
CHAPTER ONE -- [Total Page(s) 2]
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CHAPTER ONE
INTRODUCTION
1.1 BACKGROUND OF THE PROJECT
Over
the years, engineers have found many ways to utilize the impact force of
fluids. For example, the Pelton wheel has been used to make flour.
Further, the impulse turbine. Firemen make use of the kinetic energy
stored in a jet to extinguish fires in high-rise buildings. Many other
applications of fluid jets can be cited which reveals their
technological importance. This experiment is designed to study the force
that can be impacted by a jet of fluid on a surface diverting the flow
(Khurmi, 2010).
The history of the equipment “impact of jet
apparatus†is traced back to the 19thcentury. The apparatus is used to
demonstrate the way a certain type of water turbine, the pelton wheel
can extract water from a fast jet of water, which is similar to the way
in which a space craft increases or decreases its kinetic energy by
swinging around a moving plant. Nevertheless, water turbines are used
to generate power like in pelton wheel produced by an American engineer
Lester A Pelton. Engineer Lester Pelton was born in the year 1892 in
Vermilion Ohio on the shores of Lake Erie. The invention came about when
water was an under used resource and before electricity was
economically practical as a motive power. The first turbine built by
pelton was in Campton Ville. In Campton Ville, by the time search for
gold progressed, which required power to drive stamp mills that crush
the ore and pump air into mine turnnels and later to provide electricity
and compressed air. Some mines used steam engines but these required a
large and constant supply of fire wood. Therefore, instead of the slow
water wheel traditionally used by flour mills which needed only a
moderate height but used a large quantity of water, even mine owners
installed turbine wheels with cups around their circumference with a
fast jet of water coming from a reservoir high up (Moth, 2009).
Pelton
invention started from an accidental observation when he was watching a
spinning water turbine when the key holding its wheel onto its shaft
slipped causing it to be misaligned. Instead of the jet hitting the
wheel at the middle, the slip made it hit near the edge thus causing the
wheel to spin faster. It is known that the Pelton wheel is suitable for
conditions which require a 100m head of water and a flow rate which
could be used to develop about 900kW of power. Over 40 years ago, the
concept of performing simple experiments in hydraulics on hydraulic
bench was first introduced in the University of Notingham, since then,
hydraulic bench has been in use to conduct experiments with the impact
of jet apparatus.
Moreover, there is need to understand how the
deflection of a jet generates a force on the buckets and also to know
how the force is related to the rate of change of momentum in the jet
before a prediction could be made on the use of Pelton wheel (Orga and
Ujam, 2005).
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ABSRACT - [ Total Page(s): 1 ]This project is focused on experimental analysis of impact of water jet on vanes. This work intends to predict the output of a pelton wheel, and to determine its optimum rotational speed. Hence this work explains how the deflection of the jet generates a force on the buckets, and how the force is related to the rate of momentum flow in the jet. In this experiment, we measure the force generated by a jet of water striking a flat plate or a hemispherical cup, and compare the results with the compu ... Continue reading---
