Pelton Wheel

Turbine · 1878

Year: 1878
Kind: Turbine
Materials: Cast or forged stainless steel buckets, resistant to the sand in mountain water.
Efficiency: Over 90 %.
Used In: Alpine and Andean hydro with heads of hundreds of metres.
Power Density: High for hydro; small wheels for very high heads.
Cycle: None

How It Works

A high-pressure jet of water hits a ring of double buckets, splits, and leaves sideways at almost no speed — which means almost all its kinetic energy went into the wheel. An impulse turbine: the pressure is converted to velocity in the nozzle, and the wheel runs at atmospheric pressure.

Inventors

Lester Pelton

Equations

Newton's Second Law Bernoulli's Equation Gravitational Potential Energy Kinetic Energy Torricelli's Law Hydraulic Power Angular Momentum

Elements

Iron Chromium

Referenced by

element

Chromium Iron

equation

Angular Momentum Bernoulli's Equation Gravitational Potential Energy Hydraulic Power Kinetic Energy Newton's Second Law Torricelli's Law

researcher

Lester Pelton

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From the Machines database in Notion, last edited 2026-08-18. This page is the row, rendered by the build; nothing on it is written by hand.