Current understanding of environment-induced cracking of steam turbine steels (Reprinted from Proceedings of the CORROSION/2007 research topical symposium 'Advances in Environmentally Assisted Cracking', 2007)
- National Physics Laboratory, Teddington (United Kingdom)
An overview is given of the current knowledge and understanding of environment-induced cracking of steam turbine discs and blades. There has been extensive research on this theme, though our ability to predict the impact of environmental variables on service life is still constrained because early research had focused on environments that were not always representative of condensates formed in service. More recent research has yielded insight into the evolution of damage from pits and has provided more detailed long crack growth rates, but the growth of cracks in the short crack regime is largely undetermined. For coal-fired plants, the advent of two-shifting (switching on- and off-load on a daily basis) will lead to a reduction in remnant life due to transients in stress and environment. Since the number of cycles is small, the impact of load cycling is predicted to be modest. However, there may be an effect of the transient exposure to oxygen off-load on the subsequent crack growth rate on-load, and this also needs to be accounted for in life assessment.
- OSTI ID:
- 21059024
- Journal Information:
- Corrosion (Houston), Vol. 64, Issue 5; ISSN 0010-9312
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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