Impact of Operating and Health Conditions on Aero Gas Turbine: Hot Section Creep Life Using a Creep Factor Approach

A thorough assessment of component life is very important to ensure both the safety and economics of gas turbine operation. As a component’s life given by OEM is based on certain ambient and operating conditions, its actual life may vary substantially when the ambient, operating and engine health conditions change. Therefore possessing knowledge on how those conditions affect actual component life will be valuable in making informed maintenance decisions, maximising operation effectiveness and cutting down operating costs. In this paper, an impact analysis on component creep life due to different operating and engine health conditions using an introduced Creep Factor is performed, which aims to provide useful insights on the relationship between gas turbine performance change and hot section component’s creep life. As the Creep Factor is defined as the ratio between the actual creep life and a reference creep life at a user-defined condition, the magnitude of the impact can be quantified with the change of the Creep Factor. The developed creep life analysis approach was applied to a model single spool turboshaft gas turbine engine operated at various operating and health conditions. A physics-based model combined with the Creep Factor approach was then used to estimate the creep life variation of the high pressure turbine of the model engine. The results showed that for a clean engine, the change in the rotational speed has given the highest impact on the creep life consumption. Also the presence of blade cooling and component degradation is seen to significantly reduce the blade’s creep life and as the degradation effects are combined, the degree of reduction increases even more. It also shows that the Creep Factor is good indicator of creep life consumption and provides a good technique to rank the influencing factor according to the threat they imposed.© 2010 ASME