Creep-Fatigue Interaction Life Consumption of Industrial Gas Turbine Blades

This paper presents the creep-fatigue interaction life consumption of industrial gas turbine blades using the LM2500+ engine operated at Pulrose Power station, Isle of Mann as a case study. The linear damage summation approach where creep damage and fatigue damage are combined was used for the creep-fatigue interaction life consumption of the target blades. The creep damage was modelled with the Larson-Miller parameter method while fatigue damage was assessed with the modified universal slopes method and the damage due to creep-fatigue interaction was obtained from the respective life fractions. Because of the difficulty in predicting the life of engine components accurately, relative life consumption analysis was carried out in the work using the concept of creep-fatigue interaction factor which is the ratio of the creep-fatigue interaction life obtained from any condition of engine operation to a reference creep-fatigue interaction life. The developed creep-fatigue interaction life consumption analysis procedure was applied to 8 most of real engine operation. It was observed that the contribution of creep to creep-fatigue interaction life consumption is greater than that of fatigue at all ambient temperatures. The fatigue contribution is greater at lower ambient temperatures as against higher ambient temperatures. For the case study, the overall equivalent creep-fatigue factor obtained was 1.5 which indicates safe engine operation compared to the reference condition. The developed life analysis algorithm could be applied to other engines and could serve as useful tool in engine life monitoring by engine operators.