Thermal Analysis of Steam Turbine Blades

Abstract

Turbine blades of a gas turbine are responsible for extracting energy from the high temperature, high pressure gases. These blades are operated at elevated temperatures in aggressive environments and are subjected to large centrifugal forces. As many as 42 percent of the failures in gas turbine engines were only due to blading problems and the failures in these turbine blades can have dramatic effect on the safety and performance of the gas turbine engine. In this research paper, an attempt has been made to analyze the failure of gas turbine blade through Mechanical analysis. The blade under investigation belongs to a 30 MW gas turbine engines used in marine applications and is made of epoxy-resign and inconel 680 superalloys. Before failure, the turbine blade was operated for about 10000 hours while its service life was expected to be around 15000 hours. Mechanical analysis has been carried out assuming that there might be failure in the blade material due to blade operation at elevated temperature and subjected to large centrifugal forces. The gas turbine blade model profile is generated by using CATIA V5R20 software. The turbine blade is analyzed for its thermal as well as structural performance.