Mid-Wall Temperature in an Eroded Section of an Austenitic Superheater/Reheater Tube

Abstract

Superheater and reheater tubes in a fossil-fuelled boiler are subjected to erosion and corrosion that cause the tubes to lose their thickness in a localized manner. To avoid unscheduled tube failures due to creep damage and hence prevent large financial loss because of boiler shutdown and tube repairs, it is important to estimate creep life of these tubes. Creep life is very sensitive to metal temperature. This paper describes the development of a nondimensional parameter coined TM1*. It is shown that TM1* can be used to estimate the mid-wall metal temperature in the eroded/corroded section of tube.