Академический Документы
Профессиональный Документы
Культура Документы
______________________________________________________________
Report
Number 2002GRC193 Date July 2002
Number
of Pages 8 Class 1
Key Words seals, abradable seals, abradables, leakage, turbines, gas turbines, tip clearance, coatings,
honeycomb, MCrAlY material
Improving dynamic sealing between rotating and stationary parts in industrial turbines can significantly
increase unit performance. One type of improved sealing being incorporated into turbines is abradable
seals to reduce the blade-tip clearances. An abradable material is placed on the stationary shroud or
casing opposite the rotating blade tips to reduce clearances with minimum risk to the turbine components
during rubs. Also, applying an abradable material further reduces effective clearances for often-
encountered casing out of roundness and rotor lateral movement. A thermally sprayed coating is applied
to stage 1 E-Class gas turbine shrouds to reduce tip clearances and improve turbine performances up to
0.8%. Honeycomb is used as an abradable seal in the stage 2 and/or 3 of E-Class turbines with
performance benefits up to 0.6%. Efforts are continuing to develop abradable materials for these turbine
locations with increased service life.
1
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Stage 1 Stages 2 & 3
Fig. 2 Schematic of E-Class industrial gas turbine showing abradable blade tip sealing focus locations
This paper addresses development of abradable seals for Abradable seals can be classified according to their
industrial gas turbines. Figure 2 shows the key focus temperature capability:5
locations for applying abradable seals, i.e., at the ! Low temperature, usually for LP compressors—
compressor and turbine blade tips. The focus of this ambient to 400°C (750°F)
paper is to describe development for the turbine section ! Mid-range for LP & HP Compressors—ambient to
of E class gas turbines. The paper includes a general 760°C (1400°F)
discussion of abradable seals followed by descriptions ! High temperature for HP turbines—760°C (1400°F)
of the abradable development for the unshrouded first to 1150°C (2100°F).
turbine stage and shrouded second and third stages of
GE E-Class gas turbines. Alternative, abradable seals can be also characterized by
method of application:6
! Castings for polymer based abradable materials
Abradable Seals
! Brazing or diffusion bonding for honeycomb and/or
Abradable seal materials are used to decrease the fiber metals (porous fiber metal structures).
operating blade tip clearances. Without abradable seals, ! Thermal spray coatings for a large range of
the cold clearances between blade (or “bucket”) tips and powdered composite materials.
shrouds must be large enough to prevent significant
The mechanisms of wearing or cutting of abradable
contact during operation. Use of abradable seals allows
materials have been investigated using conventional
the cold build clearances to be reduced with the
tribometers7 or specially designed test rigs.8,9 However
assurance that if contact occurs, the sacrificial part will
due to the high relative speeds, >100 m/sec (>330
be the abradable material and not the blade or bucket
ft/sec), between the abradable seal and the rotating blade
tips. Also, abradable seals allow further tightening of
tip surface, the mechanisms of wear/cutting vary
effective clearances with commonly encountered shroud
considerably from low speed tribology normally
or casing out-of-roundness or lateral movement of the
associated with machining operations. This difference is
rotor relative to the casing shroud.4 For these situations,
shown schematically in Fig. 3. At high speeds, the
the shroud material is worn away locally rather than
removal/cutting of thermal spray type abradable
wearing all the rotor blade tips during interference.
coatings is done by release of small particle debris, i.e.,
<0.1 mm
2
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Designing Abradable Materials
Abradable seals are low strength structures that wear
without damaging the mating blade tips. Consequently,
they are also susceptible to gas and solid particle
erosion. Abradable structures intended for use in harsh
temperatures occurring in gas turbines can also be prone
to oxidation because of the inherent material porosity.
These conflicting properties need to be accounted for in
designing abradable seals. Abradable seals then have to
be considered as a complete tribological system that
incorporates:
• Relative motions and depth of cut — blade-tip speed
and incursion rate (Fig. 4 shows the relative radial
motion of the blade tip vs. the shroud for a
Fig. 3 Rub mechanisms associated with abradable representative operating cycle. The ideal abradable
material removal. thickness is sufficient for at least some rubbing
around the entire circumference. The running
(<0.004 in). In contrast to conventional (low speed) clearances would then be the difference between the
cutting in machine tools, the particle debris released in location of the maximum closure (pinch point) and
abradable materials is ejected at the rear of the moving steady state as identified in Fig. 4.)
blade.4 This therefore partly sets the criteria for the • Environment temperature, fluid medium and
design of such materials. It also sets a limiting design contaminants
criterion for blade-tip thickness. Generally, a cutting • Cutting element geometry and material — blade-tip
element (blade-tip) thickness less than 1.3 mm (0.05 in) thickness, shrouded or unshrouded blades
allows release of the particles from the coating. Thicker • Counter element — abradable seal material and
tips tend to entrap the loose particles between the blade structure. Manufacturing processes as well as
and the abradable material. As a result, special microstructural consistency of abradable seals can
considerations have to be given to the design of the have a profound effect on their properties.11,12
materials to allow for the cutting mechanisms (for
example, altering the base material particle morphology Properly designing an abradable system for a given
and size). application makes it unique to that particular
application. Despite the availability of many off-the-
Certain abradable materials rely more on densification shelf materials, abradable seals have to be modified or
(compaction) of the structure than on particle debris redesigned in many applications to meet the design
removal.10 Material compaction limits the functional constraints. In the process of developing abradable
depth of the abradable material since the compacted seals, several tests are performed. Figure 5 shows the
material will increase the wear of the rotating blade tips rub rig used to evaluate abradability of candidate
as the porosity is reduced. These type of seal materials abradable materials for simulated incursion rates,
include some of the thermal spray coatings and porous rotational speeds, and temperatures. Other development
metal fiber structures (fiber metals). tests and evaluations include oxidation, thermal shock,
erosion, tensile strength, and porosity determined from
Honeycombs are another type of abradable made of
image analyses.
oxidation resistant materials. Their abradability relies on
the collapse of the cellular structure as the rails rub
against them. At low incursion speeds, the cell walls are
partly deformed but worn away to a large extent. The
ratio of deformation to wear increases as the cell walls
are made thicker. At higher incursion speeds,
deformation becomes the predominant feature leading to
cell wall rupture. Increasing operating temperatures will
also increase the deformation component during rubs as
the honeycomb material softens.
3
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Typical Transient Radial Closure Cycle
Fig. 4 Representative transient radial relative movement between the shroud and blade tip.
4
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
E Class Stage 1 Turbine Abradable Seals treatments to the blade tips. Figure 7 shows a GT50
coating sample and test blade tip after rub testing at
The first stage turbine blades of E-class machines are Sulzer Innotec under simulated turbine operating
unshrouded as shown in Fig. 2. The temperatures of conditions. The material was cut well by the simulated
the stationary shroud surface, upon which the bare blade tip without any tip wear. Figure 8 shows a
abradable is placed, lie at the upper end of mid- schematic of a stage 1 shroud block on which the
temperature abradable materials described previously. GT50 coating is applied. Figure 9 is a photo of coated
In general for mid-temperature applications, Ni or Co shroud blocks and Fig. 10 depicts the coated blocks as
based alloy powders are commonly used as the basis of installed in an engine.
the abradable seal matrix. Other phases are added to
the base metal powder to make the material abradable.
These added phases are generally polymeric materials
that are used as fugitive elements to generate coating
porosity. In addition, other phases maybe included to
act as release agents.9,13
Figure 6 displays a wear map of a mid-temperature
coating system abraded at 500°C (930°F) using
titanium blades.12 The map shows the wear
mechanism domains vs. blade-tip velocity and
incursion rate. The arrows indicate the movement of
the wear regime boundaries as the polyester level
increases. As polyester content and thus porosity
increases, cutting becomes increasingly predominant
mechanism over the entire range of the speeds and
incursion rates.
5
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
The projected benefits of the stage 1 abradable coating
in output and improved heat rate are as follows:
! 3/2 H/J units: +0.80% output, -0.40% heat rate
! 5/1N/P, P N/T
R, R N/T units: +0.80% output, -0.40% heat rate
! 5/2 A-D units: +0.80% output, -0.40% heat rate
! 61A/B units: +0.70% output, -0.70% heat rate
! 7A-EA units: +0.50% output, -0.50% heat rate
! 9B/E units: +0.40% output, -0.40% heat rate
To date, the GT50 abradable coating has been applied
to the following number of units:
Stage 1 Shroud
Abradable Coating
Frame 3 1
Frame 5 27
Fig. 9 Photo of Stage 1 shroud blocks with GT50
Frame 6 85
abradable coating applied; features shown in center Frame 7 69
shroud are for instrumentation and external access. Frame 9 17
Total 198
6
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
Fig. 11 Schematic of Stage 2 and 3 shroud blocks
showing location of honeycomb abradable material
7
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
To date, the honeycomb has been applied to shrouds of 2) Chupp, R. E., Aksit, M. F., Ghasripoor, F.,
the following number of units: Turnquist, N. A., Demiroglu, M., “Advanced
Seals for Industrial Turbine Applications,” AIAA
Stage 2 Stage 3 Paper 2001-3626, July 2001.
HC Shrouds HC Shrouds 3) Morrell, P., Betridge, D., Greaves, M., Dorfman,
Frame 5 17 N/A M., Russo, L., Britton, C., and Harrison. K., “A
Frame 6 341 306 New Aluminium-Silicon/Boron Nitride Powder
for Clearance Control Application,” ITSC 98,
Frame 7 444 423
Nice, France, 1998.
Frame 9 65 63
4) Schmid, R., “New high temperature abradables for
Total 867 792 gas turbines,” Dissertation, Swiss Federal Inst. Of
Technology, Zurich, 1997 (contains extensive list
of abradable seal references).
Conclusions 5) Ghasripoor, F., Schmid, R., and Drofman. M.,
Implementation of abradable seals into the turbine “Abradables Improve Gas Turbine Efficiency,”
section of E-Class industrial gas turbines has Journal of the Inst. of Materials, Vol. 5, No. 6,
progressed well over the last few years. Abradable June 1997.
seals offer an effective means of improving turbine 6) Schmid, R. K., Ghasripoor, F., Dorfman, M., and
performance through reduced clearances. Such seals Wei. X., “An Overview of Compressor
are being applied to the casings and shrouds of gas Abradables,” ITSC 2000, Montreal, Canada, 2000.
turbines to decrease the blade-tip clearances beyond 7) Guilemany, J. M., Navarro, J., Lorenzana, C.,
what is practical by mechanical means. Development Vizcanio, S., and Miguel, J., M., “Tribological
work has been carried out to select abradable materials Behaviour of Abradable Coatings Obtained by
to best meet the design requirements. The GT50 Atmospheric Plasma Spraying (APS),” Thermal
abradable coating has been applied to nearly 200 E- Spray 2001, Singapore, May 2001.
Class stage 1 turbines with performance benefits up to 8) Ghasripoor, F., Schmid, R. K., Dorfman, M., and
0.8%. Honeycomb has been incorporated as an Russo, L., “A Review of Clearance Control Wear
abradable seal structure in stages 2 and/or 3 for nearly Mechanisms for Low Temperature Aluminum
900 E-Class gas turbines with combined performance Silicon Alloys,” ITSC 98, Nice. France, 1998.
benefits up to 0.6% for the two stages. Efforts are
9) Nava, Y., Mutasim, Z., and Coe, M., “Abradable
continuing to develop abradable materials for these
Coatings for Low-Temperature Applications,”
turbine locations with increased service life.
Thermal Spray 2001, Singapore, May 2001.
Acknowledgments 10) Borel, M. O., Nicoll, A. R., Schlaepfer, H. W., and
Schmid, R. K., “Wear Mechanisms Occurring in
The abradable sealing development work summarized Abradable Seals of Gas Turbines,” Surface
in this paper was carried out primarily at GE Global Coating Technology, 1989, pp. 117-126.
Research and GE Power Systems, who sponsored the 11) Chappel, D., Vo, L., and Howe, H., “Gas Path
work. The authors would like to acknowledge the Blade Tip Seals: Abradable Seal Material Testing
contributions of the many GE people who have been at Utility Gas and Steam Turbine Operating
involved in various aspects of developing and applying Conditions,” ASME Paper 2001-GT-0583, June
abradables in gas turbines: Brian Arness, Dalero 2001 (contains extensive list of abradable seal
Berkeley, Matt Brokaw, Jim Clare, Saim Dinc, Sue references).
Drake, Massimo Giannozzi, Bob Hoeft, James 12) Wei, X., Mallon, J. R., Correa, L. F., M. Dorfman,
Hopkins, Y.C. Lau, Murtuza Lokhandwalla, Paul M., and Ghasripoor, F., “Microstructure and
Marks, Chek Ng, Surinder Pabla, Kevin Seitzer, Bert Property Control of CoNiCrAlY Based Abradable
Stuck, and Steve Wassynger. Coatings for Optimal Performance,” ITSC 2000,
Montreal, Canada, 2000.
References 13) Ghasripoor, F., Schmid, R., Dorfman, D., and
Wei, X., “Optimizing the Performance of Plasma
1) “GE Advanced Sealing Technologies,” GE
Control Coatings up to 850C,” Surface
Brochure, 2000.
Modification Technologies XII, Rosemont, IL,
1998
8
American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics
R.E. Chupp Applying Abradable Seals to Industrial Gas Turbines 2002GRC193
F. Ghasripoor July 2002
G.D. Moore
L.S. Kalv
J.R. Johnston