Patent GB-615840-A (GB)
Title: Improvements in or relating to power plants
IPC: F02C5/08
Filed: 1946-08-14
Abstract: 615,840. Generating products of combustion under pressure; gas turbine plant. ARMSTRONG WHITWORTH & CO. (ENGINEERS), Ltd., SIR W. G. (Kadenacy, M.). Aug. 14, 1946, No. 24138. [Class 110 (iii)] [Also in Groups XII and XXVII] Apparatus for generating products of combustion under pressure comprises a valved chamber in which explosions occur periodically, a long duct through which the chamber exhausts, means, for example, an impulse turbine, for extracting some of the kinetic energy of the gases which is so located in the duct that the pressure front reaches the means at, substantially, the moment when the gases cease to react on the chamber walls and a reservoir, in which the residual kinetic energy of the gases is converted into pressure energy. The valves of the chamber are so operated that the pressure in the chamber is lowered, by reason of the momentum of the gas column, below the pressure of the incoming charge. When the impulse turbine is of the outward radial flow type, the rotor acts, after the passage of an impulse, as a centrifugal exhauster to maintain a low gas pressure in the duct. The impulse turbine may drive a supercharging fan for the chamber. The gases in the reservoir may be utilized in a gas turbine providing useful power. The impulse turbine may be used to extract the major part of the energy and in that case the reservoir is omitted and the impulse turbine discharges to the atmosphere. A chamber 20, Fig. 1, is equipped with piston valves 23, 29 for inlet and exhaust; fuel is injected at 35 and ignited. at 36. The chamber exhausts into a duct 37 leading to an impulse turbine 39 located within a reservoir 38 into which it exhausts. Gas from the reservoir 38 it utilized in a turbine 46 which drives a compressor 48 and an electric generator 49. The compressor 48 delivers air to a reservoir 51 which supplies air to the chamber 20. The chamber 20 may be replaced by the cylinder of a two-stroke engine which may be of the single piston, or, the opposed pistons type. The impulse turbine has no nozzle or inlet guide vanes and the rotor may have two rings of blades with an interposed ring of stator blades. Tho blades may be carried by a conical rotor, or, the impulse turbine may be of the axial-flow type. Two, or two groups of chambers 157, 158, Fig. 10, discharge into ducts 173, 174, which lead to two half-circular inlets 175, 176 of a bladed radial impulse turbine 177 located within and discharging into a reservoir 178. The turbine 177 drives an axial-flow compressor 183 which supplies reservoirs 163, 164, from which combustion air is drawn. Gases from the reservoir 178 are utilized in a turbine 193. The group of chambers may be the cylinders of a six-cylinder two-stroke engine. Fig. 14 shows a radial flow turbine having a volute inlet chamber 208 and a volute exhaust chamber 213. The sum of the areas of the cross-sections of the two volutes by any radial plane is constant is indicated by the development of the passages in Fig. 15. Specifications 431,856, 473,684, 473,686, 479,512, 484,465 and 541,231, [all in Group XXVII], are referred to.