The Influence of Humidity on the Creep Life of a High Pressure Gas Turbine Blade: Part II—Case Study
The determination of the rate of heat transfer from the turbine blade in a cross flow is important in hot section gas turbine life assessment. For design purposes, the rate of heat transfer is normally fixed by semi-empirical correlations. These correlations require knowledge of fluid properties which depend on temperature. For gases these properties are normally available only for the dry state, thus the possible effect of the water vapour content has been overlooked. Many gas turbines operate in environments in which air humidity is very low and therefore has little influence on gas turbine performance. However humidity becomes more important in hot, humid climates where there are large variations in ambient absolute humidity, especially in hot and humid climates. The aim of this paper is to investigate and present the effect of humidity at different operating conditions on the turbine blade coolant heat transfer and blade creep life. The effect of humidity was considered only on the air coolant side. he The heat transfer coefficient on the hot side was calculated for dry hot gas. This avoided the balancing effect of each other (heat transfer coefficient coolant side and hot side). The WAR at each operating point is quantified based on the ambient temperature and the relative humidity (0%–100%). Results showed that with increasing WAR the blade inlet coolant temperature reduced along the blade span. The blade metal temperature at each section was reduced as WAR increased, which in turn increased the blade creep life. The increase in WAR increased the specific heat of the coolant and increased the heat transfer capacity of the coolant air flow. Different operating points were also evaluated at different WAR and Tamb to identify the effect of WAR on the creep life. The results showed that an increase in WAR increased the blade creep life. The creep life of the blade at each section of interest was obtained as a function of the blade section stress and the blade metal section temperature using the LMP approach.