Nondestructive Evaluation of Stiffness and Stresses of Ceramic Candle Filters at Elevated Temperature under Vibrational Environment

In recent years a significant amount of effort has been devoted to develop damage-tolerant hot gas filter elements, which can withstand chemical, high pressure and extreme thermal cyclic loading in the coal-based environment (Alvin 1999, Spain and Starrett 1999). Ceramic candle filters have proven to be an effective filter for the ash laden gas streams, protecting the gas turbine components from exposure to particulate matter (Lippert et al. 1994). Ceramic candle filters need to sustain extreme thermal environment and vibration-induced stresses over a great period of time. Destructive tests have been used to describe physical, mechanical and thermal properties of the filters and to relate these properties and behaviors to in-service performance, and ultimately to predict the useful life of the filter materials (Pontius and Starrett 1994, Alvin et al. 1994). Nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques have been developed to determine the deterioration or the presence of damage and to estimate the remaining stiffness of ceramic candle filters (Chen and Kiriakidis 2001). This paper presents a study of parameters involved in the prediction of remaining life of ceramic candle filters under service conditions. About one hundred ceramic candle filters from previous studies (Chen and Kiriakidis 2000) and forty-six filters received during this project have been nondestructively evaluated. They are divided in Pall Vitropore, Schumacher and Coors filters. Forty-six of these filters were used having various in-service exposure times at the PSDF and the rest were unused filters. Dynamic characterization tests were employed to investigate the material properties of ceramic candle filters. The vibration frequency changes due to exposure hours, dust cake accumulation, candle's axisymmetry, boundary conditions and elevated temperatures are studied. Investigations on fatigue stresses of the filters due to vibration of the plenum and back pulse shaking are also studied. Finite element models (FEM) are built to calculate the filter's dynamic response with different boundary conditions at various temperatures. The experimental natural frequencies of the candle filters were also compared with an analysis of a general Timoshenko beam equation that includes various boundary restraints