LIFETIME PREDICTION MODELING OF AIRFOILS FOR ADVANCED POWER GENERATION

The use of gases produced from coal as a turbine fuel offers an attractive means for efficiently generating electric power from our Nation's most abundant fossil fuel resource. The oxy-fuel and hydrogen-fired turbine concepts promise increased efficiency and low emissions on the expense of increased turbine inlet temperature (TIT) and different working fluid. Developing the turbine technology and materials is critical to the creation of these near-zero emission power generation technologies. A computational methodology, based on three-dimensional finite element analysis (FEA) and damage mechanics is presented for predicting the evolution of creep and fatigue in airfoils. We took a first look at airfoil thermal distributions in these advanced turbine systems based on CFD analysis. The damage mechanics-based creep and fatigue models were implemented as user modified routine in commercial package ANSYS. This routine was used to visualize the creep and fatigue damage evolution over airfoils for hydrogen-fired and oxy-fuel turbines concepts, and regions most susceptible to failure were indentified. Model allows for interaction between creep and fatigue damage thus damage due to fatigue and creep processes acting separately in one cycle will affect both the fatigue and creep damage rates in the next cycle. Simulation results were presented for various thermal conductivity of the top coat. Surface maps were created on the airfoil showing the development of the TGO scale and the Al depletion of the bond coat.In conjunction with model development, laboratory-scale experimental validation was executed to evaluate the influence of operational compressive stress levels on the performance of the TBC system. TBC coated single crystal coupons were exposed isothermally in air at 900, 1000, 1100oC with and without compressive load. Exposed samples were cross-sectioned and evaluated with scanning electron microscope (SEM). Performance data was collected based on image analysis. Energy-dispersive x-ray (EDX) was employed to study the elemental distribution in TBC system after exposure. Nanoindentation was used to study the mechanical properties (Young's modulus and hardness) of the components in the TBC system and their evolution with temperature and time