Computation of Working Life Consumption of a Steam Turbine Rotor

Abstract

Fatigue is one of the most important aging effects of power plant components. Information about fatigue helps in assessing structural degradation of the component and so assists in planning in-service inspection and maintenance. In this paper, we present a computation method that can be used to estimate the working life consumption of a steam turbine rotor. In the method, creep and low cycle material damage were considered. The calculations are based on the Palmgren–Miner hypothesis of linear damage accumulation. The computation was done utilizing the Microsoft Excel software package and the VISUAL BASIC for application programming language. As a reference, we used the MAN-339 MW steam turbine installed in the “Kosovo-B” power plant station in Obilic. This method can be implemented to other parts of the power plant that will result in better organization of the maintenance and ultimate enhancement of the reliability and availability of the plant.