Kaplan Turbine

The Kaplan turbine is a propeller-type water turbine which has adjustable blades. It was developed in 1913 by the Austrian professor Viktor Kaplan, who combined automatically adjusted propeller blades with automatically adjusted wicket gates to achieve efficiency over a wide range of flow and water level.

The Kaplan turbine was an evolution of the Francis turbine. Its invention allowed efficient power production in low-head applications that was not possible with Francis turbines. The head ranges from 10–70 meters and the output from 5 to 120 MW. Runner diameters are between 2 and 8 meters. The range of the turbine is from 79 to 429 rpm. Kaplan turbines are now widely used throughout the world in high-flow, low-head power production.