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Procedia Structural
Structural IntegrityIntegrity
Procedia500
(2017) 869–874
(2016) 000–000
www.elsevier.com/locate/procedia

2nd International Conference on Structural Integrity, ICSI 2017, 4-7 September 2017, Funchal,
2nd International Conference on Structural Integrity,
Madeira, ICSI 2017, 4-7 September 2017, Funchal,
Portugal
Madeira, Portugal
Numerical studies of the residual lifetime of power plant
Numerical
XV Portuguese studies
Conference of thePCF
on Fracture, residual lifetime
2016, 10-12 of2016,
February power
Paço plant
de Arcos, Portugal
components based on experimental results at elevated temperatures
components based on experimental results at elevated temperatures
Thermo-mechanical modeling of a high pressure turbine blade of an
Maria Paarmann*, Patrick Mutschler, Manuela Sander
Maria Paarmann*, airplane gasMutschler,
Patrick turbine engine Manuela Sander
University of Rostock, Institute of structural Mechanics, Albert-Einstein-Str. 2, 18059 Rostock
University of Rostock, Institute of structural Mechanics, Albert-Einstein-Str. 2, 18059 Rostock
P. Brandãoa, V. Infanteb, A.M. Deusc*
Abstracta
AbstractDepartment of Mechanical Engineering, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1, 1049-001 Lisboa,
Portugal
In b the future, the energy supply will strongly fluctuate, which results in more frequently load cycles. For this reason,
IDMEC, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Instituto Superior Técnico, Universidade de Lisboa, Av. Rovisco Pais, 1, 1049-001 Lisboa,
In the future,to
it is necessary theanalyze
energy fatigue
supply will
crackstrongly
growthfluctuate,
under the which results
aspect
Portugal in more frequently
of reasonable load cases loadincycles.
relevantForpower
this reason,
plant
it isc
necessary
CeFEMA,
components. to analyze
Department of fatigue
Mechanical crack growth
Engineering, under
Instituto the
Superior aspect
Técnico, of reasonable
Universidade de load
Lisboa,cases
Av. in
Roviscorelevant
Pais, 1, power
1049-001 plant
Lisboa,
components. Portugal
Therefore, numerical three-dimensional fatigue crack growth simulations for different power plant components
haveTherefore, numerical
been performed usingthree-dimensional
FRANC3D taking fatigue crack growth
temperature simulations
transients for different
and pressure loads as power
well as plant components
different relevant
have
crack been
Abstract performed using FRANC3D taking temperature transients and pressure loads as well
positions into account. The results show that the temperature gradient of thermal loadings has a large influence as different relevant
crack positions into account. The results show that the temperature gradient
on stress intensity factors (SIF) and may lead to much higher SIF than under pure mechanical loading.of thermal loadings has a large influence
onDuring
stress
In intensity
ordertheir factors
operation,
to quantify the(SIF)
modern and
residual may
aircraft lead temperature-dependent
engine
lifetime, tocomponents
much higherareSIF thanfatigue
subjected under pure mechanical
to increasingly
crack growth loading.
demanding
curves operating
for different conditions,
stress
In order
especially to
the quantify
high the
pressure residual
turbine lifetime,
(HPT) temperature-dependent
blades. Such conditions cause fatigue
these crack
parts to growth
undergo
ratios were experimentally determined. Therefore, experiments with constant temperatures between room temperature curves
different for
types different
of stress
time-dependent
degradation,
ratios were one of which isdetermined.
experimentally creep. A model using theexperiments
Therefore, finite elementwith
method (FEM)
constant was developed,
temperatures in order
between to betemperature
room able to predict
and 600°C have been performed using C(T)-specimens cut of a decommissioned high-pressure bypass station made
andthe600°C
creep have
behaviour
been of HPT blades.
performed usingFlight data records cut
C(T)-specimens (FDR)of afor a specific aircraft,
decommissioned provided bybypass
high-pressure a commercial aviation
of the ferritic-martensitic
company, were used to obtainsteel thermal
X20CrMoV12-1.
and mechanical The investigations show that
data for three different crack
flight growth
cycles. ratestorise
In order instation
create the made
the PARIS-
3D model
ofneeded
the ferritic-martensitic
regime under
for thehigher steel aX20CrMoV12-1.
FEM temperatures.
analysis, HPTThe bladedata
scrap The
were investigations
wasfinally used
scanned, show
andtoitsextractthata(N)-curves
chemical crack growth
composition rates
from
and rise inproperties
numerical
material theresults
PARIS- in
were
regime
FRANC3D. higher temperatures. The data were finally used to extract a(N)-curves
obtained. The data that was gathered was fed into the FEM model and different simulations were run, first with a simplifiedin3D
under from numerical results
FRANC3D.
rectangular block shape, in order to better establish the model, and then with the real 3D mesh obtained from the blade scrap. The
overall
© 2017
2017The expected
The behaviour
Authors. Publishedin by
terms of displacement
Elsevier was observed, in particular at the trailing edge of the blade. Therefore such a
© Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. B.V.
© model can under
2017 The be useful
Authors. in the goalby
Published ofElsevier
predicting turbine
B.V. blade life, given a set of FDR data.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of ICSIof
Peer-review responsibility of the Scientific Committee ICSI
2017 2017.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of ICSI 2017.
© 2016 thermal
Keywords: The Authors.
loading;Published
power plantbycomponents;
Elsevier B.V.
residual lifetime prediction
Peer-review
Keywords: under
thermal responsibility
loading; power plantof the Scientific
components; Committee
residual of PCF 2016.
lifetime prediction

Keywords: High Pressure Turbine Blade; Creep; Finite Element Method; 3D Model; Simulation.

* Corresponding author. Tel.: +49-381-498-9340; fax: +49-381-498-9342.

* Corresponding
E-mail address:author. Tel.: +49-381-498-9340; fax: +49-381-498-9342.
maria.paarmann@uni-rostock.de
E-mail address: maria.paarmann@uni-rostock.de
2452-3216 © 2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review underThe
2452-3216 © 2017 responsibility of theby
Authors. Published Scientific Committee of ICSI 2017.
Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review underauthor.
* Corresponding responsibility
Tel.: +351of218419991.
the Scientific Committee of ICSI 2017.
E-mail address: amd@tecnico.ulisboa.pt

2452-3216 © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of PCF 2016.
2452-3216  2017 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.
Peer-review under responsibility of the Scientific Committee of ICSI 2017
10.1016/j.prostr.2017.07.108
870 Maria Paarmann et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 5 (2017) 869–874
2 M. Paarmann et al / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2017) 000–000

1. Introduction

In future, renewable energies shall substitute fossil power stations. This will lead to a much more flexible operation
of conventional power plants, which in turn leads to enhanced cyclic stresses. Therefore, fatigue and fatigue crack
growth become much more, and the influence of creep fatigue becomes less important. These new load cases were
not considered when the power plants were designed. To minimize risks, the influence of these loads on the power
plant components has to be evaluated. For investigating fatigue crack growth the knowledge of the load in the
component and the strength of the material are very important.
Thus, crack growth experiments were carried out to get a reliable database to describe the fatigue crack growth at
elevated temperatures. This is important, because the power plant components operate at elevated temperature and the
temperature has an enormous influence on the crack growth rate, which is shown e.g by Petit, Henaff and Sarrazin-
Baudoux (1999), Chen, Kawagoishi and Nisitani (2000) and UEMATSU et al. (2008).
The load in the power plant components is determined with numerical linear-elastic simulations. The simulations
are carried out exemplarily at three relevant components. For one component the results are shown in detail. The
numeric simulations deliver e.g. the stress intensity factor (SIF) solution for diverse crack positions and load cases.
Finally as a result, residual lifetimes can be predicted starting from an initial crack for the selected components.

2. Experiments for describing material behavior under elevated temperatures

To simulate crack growth in power plant components, it is necessary to know and to describe their temperature
dependent crack growth behavior. Therefore, fatigue crack growth tests were carried out with C(T)-specimens, which
have been machined in different orientations from a decommissioned high pressure bypass valve made of
X20CrMoV12-1. Thus, various crack orientations can be evaluated separately. Beside the orientation, the test
frequency, the normalized K-gradient (Test Method for Measurement of Fatigue Crack Growth Rates, 2015), R-ratio
and the temperature were varied. The main influencing factors are temperature and R-ratio. The other parameters have
no or just a minor influence on the crack growth rate. For all investigated temperatures, the crack growth tests have
shown that the R-ratio has almost no influence in the PARIS-regime. In the threshold range higher R-ratios lead to
lower threshold values. This expected trend is observed for all investigated temperatures. However, the influence of
the R-ratio decreases for increasing temperatures.
Fig. 1 exemplarily shows mean curves of the crack growth data for R = 0.1 and R = 0.5 for the investigated
temperatures. Both R-ratios show that the crack growth rates in the PARIS-regime increase for increasing
temperatures. Further, it is noticeable that the threshold values in Fig. 1a of the elevated temperatures are significantly
lower than the threshold value of the tests at room temperature. But, for higher temperatures the trend of decreasing
threshold values is not existent.
a) b)

R = 0.1 R = 0.5

Fig. 1. (a) Mean curves of the crack growth tests for R = 0.1, and (b) for R = 0.5 (Mutschler and Sander (2016))
 Maria Paarmann et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 5 (2017) 869–874 871
M. Paarmann et al./ Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2017) 000–000 3

3. Numerical crack growth simulations on power plant components

On the basis of the experiments, power plant components were simulated numerically. Therefore, uncracked
models were built in ABAQUS to import them in FRANC3D. In this program quasi-static crack growth simulations
were executed starting at a user defined initial crack front. The examined components are a ball-shaped part, a turbine
bypass valve and a boiler circulation pump (Fig. 2). Within the scope of this paper, the results for the ball-shaped part
are exemplarily presented.
There are two relevant positions for crack growth initiation (Fig. 2a). Both were identified from XFEM-simulations
on the one hand under constant inner pressure and on the other hand under transient thermal loading (Schulz et al.,
2014). Crack initiation position F results from the inner pressure, while position E follows from transient thermal
loading. The simulated scenarios (sc.) contain an emergency shutdown (from 545°C to 50°C) within three minutes as
a worst case situation (scenario 1.1). Moreover, the influence of the temperature gradient was investigated by
decreasing the temperature from 545°C to 50°C within thirty minutes (scenario 1.2) and decreasing the temperature
from 545°C to 300°C also within three minutes (scenario 1.3). The inner pressure of 26.6 MPa was simulated as steady
state scenario 2. Superimposed thermal and mechanical loading was also investigated (see (Paarmann and Sander,
2016)).
Initiation
a) position F
b) c)

Initiation
position E

Fig. 2. (a) Model and crack initiation positions in the ball-shaped part; (b) model of the simulated turbine bypass valve; (c) modelled sector of the
boiler circulation pump

All simulations started with a semi-circular crack, which had an initial crack depth a0 = 5 mm. The cyclic stress
intensity factors (SIF) were calculated for all scenarios with a stress ratio of R = 0. The investigations on both crack
initiation positions lead to similar results. In Fig. 3 the results of pure thermal loadings normalized on scenario 2 are
shown for crack initiation position F. It can be recognized that pure mechanical loading (scenario 2) leads to significant
smaller stress intensity than pure thermal loading within a short shutdown duration (scenario 1.1 and 1.3). The slight
differences between scenario 2 and 1.2 also underline the large influence of the temperature gradient on crack growth.
While the SIF of scenario 2 (see (Paarmann and Sander, 2016)) rises, the SIF of thermal influenced scenarios decreases
over the progressing crack growth. It originates from a drop of the stresses over the wall thickness due to a decreasing
temperature. A comparison of scenario 2 and 1.2 also shows that beginning at a crack depth of about 27 mm the
temperature leads at the deepest point of the crack front to smaller SIF than under pure mechanical loading.
4872 Maria Paarmann
M. Paarmann et al. / Procedia
et al / Structural Structural00
Integrity Procedia Integrity
(2017)5000–000
(2017) 869–874

a) 60 b) 60 c) 60
Sc 1.1
40 40 Sc 1.2 40
KI / KI,Sc2

Sc 1.3

20 20 20

0 0 0

10 20 30 10 20 30 10 20 30
a [mm] a [mm] a [mm]

Fig. 3. Comparison of cyclic SIF over crack growth for different temperature transients on (a) the surface point in the sphere, (b) the deepest point
of crack front and (c) the surface point in the connector

In order to investigate the influence of the crack shape, a circumferential crack was inserted as initial crack front
for scenario 1.1. Due to numerical problems the simulations of the semi-elliptical cracks stop at a crack depth of 32.8
mm. The cyclic SIF of the circumferential crack is about 25% higher than the SIF of the semi-elliptical crack on its
deepest point (A). On the other hand the SIF of the surface point C of the semi-elliptical crack front is nearly constant
and larger than the SIF of the circumferential crack starting at a = 15mm. This results from higher thermal loadings
at smaller crack depth. The comparison underlines that cracks grow faster in the width than in the depth direction and
crack growth gets slower with increasing wall thickness depending on the loading.
80
semi-elliptical A
60 semi-elliptical C
KI / KI,Sc2

circumferential
40

20

10 20 30 40 50 60
a [mm]

Fig. 4. Comparison of cyclic SIF over crack depth of semi-elliptical and circumferential crack shapes on position E for scenario 1

4. Lifetime prediction of the ball-shaped part based on experimental and numerical results

With the experimental and numerical results from chapters 2 and 3 lifetime predictions are achievable. Therefore,
the cyclic SIF ΔK in the cases of scenarios 1 and 2 was defined with a stress ratio of R = 0. For scenario 2, Fig. 5
shows exemplarily the necessary temperature dependent crack depth for crack growth.
It becomes obvious that only for position F crack growth starts at the initial crack size. For position E the
temperature dependent threshold values ΔKth are exceeded for crack depths between 13 mm and 17 mm. For that
reason a(N)-curve were only determined for position F starting at the initial crack size a0 = 5 mm. Moreover,
investigations for the steady state scenario 2 at different temperatures were made to test the influence of constant
temperature on the residual lifetime of an actual use case. Fig. 6 shows a(N)-curves for the experimentally analyzed
temperatures.
 Maria Paarmann et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 5 (2017) 869–874 873
M. Paarmann et al./ Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2017) 000–000 5

a) 4 b) 4
point A
K / Kth,RT [ ] 3 3 point C

K / Kth,RT [ ]
2 2

1 ΔKth,500 1
ΔKth,400
ΔKth,300
ΔKth,600
0 0
10 20 30 40 10 20 30 40 50
a [mm] a [mm]

Fig. 5. Crack growth start at front point A and C depending on temperature for (a) position F and (b) position E

The curves are based on the FORMAN/METTU equation and the parameters determined from the experimental
data. Another base of the lifetime prediction is the SIF-solution numerically determined in FRANC3D (chapter 3). In
the current case the SIF for the largest crack size does not exceed the critical SIF. Nevertheless, the curves underline
faster crack growth on the surface point than on the deepest point of the crack front. The figure also shows that high
temperatures result in a smaller number of cycles N at the critical crack size ccrit of T = 600°C. For room temperature
for example N is about thirteen times higher than at T = 600°C. It underlines the importance of investigating
temperature dependent residual lifetime in power plant components.
a)
60
RT 300°C 400°C 500°C 600°C
50

40
a [mm]

30

20

10

0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
N[] 6
x 10

b)
60
ccrit
50

40
c [mm]

30

20

10

0
0 0.5 1 1.5 2 2.5 3 3.5 4
N[] 6
x 10

Fig. 6. Comparison of temperature dependent crack growth curves in the ball-shaped part for scenario 2 at (a) the deepest crack front point A and
(b) the surface point C of position F
874 Maria Paarmann et al. / Procedia Structural Integrity 5 (2017) 869–874
6 M. Paarmann et al / Structural Integrity Procedia 00 (2017) 000–000

5. Conclusion

Because of the strong fluctuation of the energy supply, the fossil power plants are cyclically loaded. For assure a
safe life, residual lifetime calculations must be performed. On the example of a ball-shaped part, numerical crack
growth simulations were made using FRANC3D. Next to mechanical loading, pure thermal loading with different
temperature gradients were applied. The results show a large dependency of the SIF from this gradient. Moreover, the
thermal loading leads to stresses over the wall thickness, which results in a decreasing SIF over the crack depth. As
opposed to this, the SIF of pure mechanical loading rises with crack propagation.
The numerical results were also used for lifetime prediction. Therefore, experiments were made to determine
temperature dependent crack growth parameters using the FORMAN/METTU equation. On the example of pure
mechanical loading the influence of temperature was investigated by applying the parameters for different
temperatures. Based on high threshold values, crack growth would not start until high crack lengths. Moreover, the
results show a higher crack growth rate for high temperatures.

Acknowledgements

The authors thank the German Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy for funding the joint project THERRI
(English: Determination of characteristic values for estimating thermal fatigue crack growth in power plants, German:
Ermittlung von Kennwerten zur Bewertung thermischen Ermüdungsrisswachstums in Kraftwerken) Further, the
authors greatly acknowledge the support by the partners TÜV NORD SysTec GmbH & Co. KG, the chair of Technical
Thermodynamics at the University of Rostock, the KNG power plant Rostock and the research institute Jülich.

References

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doi: 10.1016/S0921-5093(99)00555-9
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temperatures’, Procedia Structural Integrity, 2, pp. 801–808. doi: 10.1016/j.prostr.2016.06.103
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