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For water wheels used to drive boats, see paddle wheel. For wheels used solely to lift water see noria. For factories or industries driven by water wheels see watermill.

A water wheel is a hydropower system; a machine for extracting power from the flow of water. Water wheels and hydropower was widely used in the Middle Ages, powering most industry in Europe, along with the windmill. The most common use of the water wheel was to mill flour in gristmills, but other uses included foundry work and machining, and pounding linen for use in paper.

A water wheel consists of a large wooden or metal wheel, with a number of blades or buckets arranged on the outside rim forming the driving surface. Most commonly, the wheel is mounted vertically on a horizontal axle, but the tub or Norse wheel is mounted horizontally on a vertical shaft. Vertical wheels can transmit power either through the axle or via a ring gear and typically drive belts or gears; horizontal wheels usually directly drive their load. A channel created for the water to follow after leaving the wheel is commonly referred to as a "tailrace."

History of Water Wheel Technology

India

One this basis he suggested that the machine in question was a noria and that it was the first water powered prime mover.

Irrigation water for crops was provided by using water raising wheels, some driven by the force of the current in the river from which the water was being raised. This kind of water raising device was used in ancient India.

Around 1150 A.D., the astronomer Bhaskara Achārya wrote a book in which there was a chapter on astronomical instruments. He had observed the water raising of wheel and speculated if such a wheel could lift enough water to replenish the steam driving it. Hence, a Perpetual motion machine could be created.

The construction of water works and aspects of water technology in India is described in Arabic and Persian works. During medieval times, the diffusion of Indian and Persian irrigation technologies gave rise to an advanced irrigation system which bought about economic growth and also helped in the growth of material culture.

Greco-Roman Europe

The technology of the water wheel had long been known, but it was not put into widespread use until the Middle Ages when an acute shortage of labor made machines such as the water wheel cost effective. However, the water wheels in ancient Rome and ancient China found many practical uses in powering mills for pounding grain and other substances. The Romans used both fixed and floating water wheels and introduced water power to other countries of the Roman Empire. The Romans were known to use waterwheels extensively in mining projects, with enormous Roman-era waterwheels found in places like modern-day Spain. In the 1st century BC, the Greek epigrammatist Antipater of Thessalonica was the first to make a reference to the waterwheel. He praised it for its use in grinding grain and the reduction of human labor:

Cease from grinding, oh you toilers; women slumber still, Even if the crowing rooster calls the morning star. For Demeter has appointed nymphs to turn your mill, And upon the waterwheel alighting here they are. See how quick they twirl the axle whose revolving rays spin heavy rollers quarried overseas. So again we savor the delights of ancient days, Taught to eat the fruits of Mother Earth in ease.

Ancient China

By at least the 1st century AD, the Chinese of the Eastern Han Dynasty began to use waterwheels to crush grain in mills and to power the piston-bellows in forging iron ore into cast iron.

In the text known as the Xin Lun written by Huan Tan about 20 AD (during the usurpation of Wang Mang), it states that the legendary mythological king known as Fu Xi was the one responsible for the pestle and mortar, which evolved into the tilt-hammer and then trip hammer device (see trip hammer). Although the author speaks of the mythological Fu Xi, a passage of his writing gives hint that the waterwheel was in widespread use by the 1st century AD in China (Wade-Giles spelling):

Fu Hsi invented the pestle and mortar, which is so useful, and later on it was cleverly improved in such a way that the whole weight of the body could be used for treading on the tilt-hammer (tui), thus increasing the efficiency ten times. Afterwards the power of animals—donkeys, mules, oxen, and horses—was applied by means of machinery, and water-power too used for pounding, so that the benefit was increased a hundredfold.

In the year 31 AD, the engineer and Prefect of Nanyang, Du Shi, applied a complex use of the waterwheel and machinery to power the bellows of the blast furnace to create cast iron. Du Shi is mentioned briefly in the Book of Later Han (Hou Han Shu) as follows (in Wade-Giles spelling):

In the seventh year of the Chien-Wu reign period (+31 (AD)) Tu Shih was posted to be Prefect of Nanyang. He was a generous man and his policies were peaceful; he destroyed evil-doers and established the dignity (of his office). Good at planning, he loved the common people and wished to save their labor. He invented a water-power reciprocator (shui phai) for the casting of (iron) agricultural implements. Those who smelted and cast already had the push-bellows to blow up their charcoal fires, and now they were instructed to use the rushing of the water (chi shui) to operate it...Thus the people got great benefit for little labor. They found the 'water(-powered) bellows' convenient and adopted it widely .

Waterwheels in China found practical uses such as this, as well as extraordinary use. The inventor Zhang Heng (78–139) was the first in history to apply motive power in rotating the astronomical instrument of an armillary sphere, by use of a waterwheel. The mechanical engineer Ma Jun (200–265) once used a waterwheel to power and operate a large mechanical puppet theater for Emperor Ming of Wei.

Medieval Europe and Modern

Cistercian monasteries, in particular, made extensive use of water wheels to power watermills of many kinds. An early example of a very large waterwheel is the still extant wheel at the early 13th century Real Monasterio de Nuestra Senora de Rueda, a Cistercian monastery in the Aragon region of Spain. Grist mills (for corn) were undoubtedly the most common, but there were also sawmills, fulling mills and mills to fulfill many other labor-intensive tasks. The water wheel remained competitive with the steam engine well into the Industrial Revolution.

The main difficulty of water wheels was their inseparability from water. This meant that mills often needed to be located far from population centers and away from natural resources. Water mills were still in commercial use well into the twentieth century, however.

Overshot & pitchback waterwheels are suitable where there is a small stream with a height difference of more than 2 meters, often in association with a small reservoir. Breastshot and undershot wheels can be used on rivers or high volume flows with large reservoirs.

The most powerful waterwheel built in the United Kingdom was the 100 hp Quarry Bank Mill Waterwheel near Manchester. A high breastshot design, it was retired in 1904 and replaced with several turbines. It has now been restored and is a museum open to the public.

Modern Hydro-electric dams can be viewed as the descendants of the water wheel as they too take advantage of the movement of water downhill.

Types

Undershot wheel

A vertically mounted water wheel that is rotated by water striking paddles or blades at the bottom of the wheel is said to be undershot. This is generally the least efficient, oldest type of wheel (with the exception of the poncelet wheel). It has the advantage of being cheaper and simpler to build, but is less powerful and can only be used where the flow rate is sufficient to provide torque.

Undershot wheels gain no advantage from head and are never backshot. They are most suited to shallow streams in flat country.

Undershot wheels are also well suited to installation on floating platforms, and the Romans mounted them immediately downstream from bridges where the flow restriction of arched bridge supports increased the speed of the current.

Backshot wheel

An overshot wheel is backshot by introducing the intake water from the same direction as the flow of the output water, sometimes by the introduction of a 180 degree turn just past the wheel itself, and some times through a lengthy flume or penstock configuration dictated by the surrounding terrain.

A backshot wheel continues to function until the water in the wheel pit rises well above the height of the axle, when any other overshot wheel will be stopped or even destroyed. This makes the technique particularly applicable in streams that experience extreme seasonal variations in flow, and reduces the need for complex sluice and tail race configurations. A backshot wheel may also gain power from the water's current past the bottom of the wheel, and not just the weight of the water falling in the wheel's buckets.

Backshot water wheels are also often referred to as pitchback or Mid-Wheels.

Overshot wheel

A vertically mounted water wheel that is rotated by falling water striking paddles, blades or buckets near the top of the wheel is said to be overshot. Overshot wheels are the most efficient type; an overshot steel wheel that is also backshot can be more efficient than all but the most advanced and well-constructed turbines. In some situations an overshot wheel is vastly preferable to any turbine.

A typical overshot wheel has the water channeled to the wheel at the top and slightly to one side in the direction of rotation. The water collects in the buckets on that side of the wheel, making it heavier than the other "empty" side. The weight turns the wheel, and the water flows out into the tail-water when the wheel rotates enough to invert the buckets. The overshot design can use all of the water flow for power (unless there is a leak) and does not require rapid flow.

Overshot wheels demand exact engineering and significant head, which usually means significant investment in constructing a dam, millpond and waterways.

Unlike undershot wheels, overshot wheels gain a double advantage from gravity. Not only is the force of the flowing water partially transferred to the wheel, the weight of the water descending in the wheel's buckets also imparts additional energy. The mechanical power derived from an overshot wheel is determined by the wheel's physical size and the available head, so they are ideally suited to hilly or mountainous country.

Although traditionally water wheels have been made mostly from wood, the use of steel in overshot wheels allows faster rotation (possibly reducing the need for gearing) without extreme reductions in available torque. A wooden wheel with a wooden axle that can easily turn low-speed, high-torque loads such as a run of millstones cannot necessarily sustain high speeds such as are needed for hydroelectric power generation.

Most overshot water wheels turn in the opposite direction of the water's flow. This is because the water flows over the top of the wheel, and not under it as in an undershot or breastshot design.

Breastshot wheel

A vertically mounted water wheel that is rotated by falling water striking buckets near the center of the wheel's edge, or just above it, is said to be breastshot. Breastshot wheels are the most common type in the United States of America and are said to have powered the American industrial revolution.

Breastshot wheels are less efficient than overshot wheels, more efficient than undershot wheels, and are not backshot. The individual blades of a breastshot wheel are actually buckets, as are those of most overshot wheels, and not simple paddles like those of most undershot wheels (the Poncelet design being a notable exception). A breastshot wheel requires a good trash rake and typically has a masonry "apron" closely conforming to the wheel face, which helps contain the water in the buckets as they progress downwards. Breastshot wheels are preferred for steady, high-volume flows such as are found on the fall line of the North American East Coast.

See also

• Banki turbine
• Pelton wheel
• Derby Industrial Museum
• Francis turbine
• Hydraulic ram
• Kaplan turbine
• Laxey Wheel
• Tyson turbine
• Water turbine
• Watermills in the United Kingdom
• Cable railway
• Ian Gilmartin

Notes

1. Dictionary definition of "tailrace."
2. Reynolds, Terry S. "Stronger Than a Hundred Men: A History of the Vertical Water Wheel." Published 1983. Johns Hopkins University Press . ISBN 0801872480.
3. Pacey, Arnold. "Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-year History." Published 1990. MIT Press. pp 10
4. Pacey, Arnold. "Technology in World Civilization: A Thousand-year History." Published 1990. MIT Press. pp 36
5. Water Works and Irrigation System in India during Pre-Mughal Times. Iqtidar Husain Siddiqui. Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient, Vol. 29, No. 1 (Feb., 1986), pp. 52-77
6. Needham, Volume 4, Part 2, 392.
7. Needham, Volume 4, Part 2, 370

References

• Needham, Joseph (1986). Science and Civilization in China: Volume 4, Part 2. Taipei: Caves Books, Ltd.

External links

• Glossary of water wheel terms
• Water wheel history
• Esay/audio clip
• Waterwheel Factory, with pictures of water wheels

• Watermills