Erosion and its Effect on a Water-Cooled Turbine
Erosion tests were run to obtain data for designing a water-cooled gas turbine collection shroud. All tests utilized a coherent stream of water ejected from a static nozzle against stationary small block specimens. Twenty-one tests were run with aluminum specimens and 16 more tests with other materials. The impact velocity was varied from 165 to 270 m/s (540 to 890 fps). The impact angle was varied from 10 to 90 deg. The mass loss rate results generally show four erosion regions, which are consistent with the literature. A correlation between regions two and four was found. Aluminum specimen erosion rate was found to be unexpectedly high with impact angles of 10 deg and moderate-to-high impact velocity. No report of previous liquid erosion work at impact angles less than 30 deg was found; since it is expected that water-cooled gas turbines will operate at impact angles of about 15 deg, erosion in this low impact angle region should be studied. If the correlation between erosion regions two and four can be quantized, then very short-time tests could be used to predict long-term erosion at minimal cost.