Research Paper

DESIGN MODIFICATION FOR FILLET STRESSES IN STEAM

TURBINE BLADE
Tulsidas. D*,Dr.Shantharaja. M,a Dr. Kumar. Kb

Address for Correspondence

* Mechanical Engineering, School of Engineering & Technology, Jain University, India.
a
Mechanical Engineering, UVCE, Bangalore, India
b
Mechanical Engineering, PESCE, Mandya, India
ABSTRACT
The large variety of turbo-machinery blade root geometries used in industry prompted the question if an optimum geometry
could be found. An optimum blade root was defined, as a root with practical geometry which, when loaded returns the
minimum fillet stress concentration factor. The present paper outlines the design modification for fillet stresses and a special
attention is made on SCF of the blade root (T-root) which fails and to guarantee for safe and reliable operation under all
possible service conditions. Finite Element Analysis is used to determine the fillet stresses and Peterson’s Stress
Concentration Factor chart is effectively utilized to modify the blade root. The root is modified due to the difficulty in
manufacturing the butting surface of the tang which grips the blade to the disk crowns having small contact area.
KEYWORDS Steam Turbine Blade Root, Stress Concentration Factor, Fillet Stresses, Disk stresses.
1.0. INTRODUCTION have become available to optimize the shape and
In most axial flow turbo machinery used today the minimize the stress values so as to improve the
blades which direct the flow of steam are structural integrity of the bladed disk [3].
manufactured separately to the turbine disks on The tang in steam turbine blades play a vital role in
which they are then mounted. The blade rotor preventing the disk opening during operating
connection is highly and complexly stressed area condition as well off design condition but the
which if not properly designed can fail with serious criticality lies in establishing the contact between the
consequences. In critical areas the fillet stresses are blade tang and disk crown across the circumference,
modified using the Petersons stress concentration Since the contact area is approximately less than
factor chart. 1mm.The manufacturing feasibility would be a real
Stress Concentration Factors are significant in challenge. Estimating the butting forces at the tang
machine elements as it gives rise to localized stresses, region is an another challenge. In the present work
any change in the design of surface or abrupt change one such effort is made in looking at the blade root
in the cross section. Almost all machine components without the tang with minor modifications at the
and structural members act as ‘Stress risers’. These blade root butting area in the blade and the disk root
discontinuities are very dangerous which lead to fillet to reduce the peak stresses as an initial work at
failure due to the Peak Stresses introducing cracks. blade root fillet and to make a sensitivity study using
These cracks propagate to catastrophic failure before Peterson’s chart and to modify the blade root to
the desired design life. Hence, it is very much reduce the stress concentration factor at blade root
essential to analyze the stress concentration factors fillet as well the disk fillet stresses.
for critical applications like Turbine Rotor blades. In 2.0. TURBINE BLADE OVERVIEW
the light of the above Finite Element Analysis (FEA) Different stages of the turbine parts of turbo
with fine mesh in the vicinity of the blade root of machinery use different blades, the properties of
Steam Turbine Rotor is applied to determine stress which are designed to meet the specific operating
concentration factors. criteria of those stages in which they are used. The
Geometric discontinuities cause a large variation of turbine stages often use blades with internal cooling
stress locally, and often produce a significant while the very long blades in the final stages of large
increase in stress called as ‘Stress Concentration’. steam turbines are pretwisted so that when the
This can also appear when loads are applied over a centrifugal force acting on them untwists the blades
small area or at a point. Geometric discontinuities are to the correct angular alignment with the steam flow
often called as ‘Stress Risers’. Examples of stress is achieved [4].
risers include holes, notches, fillets and treads in a Often the high pressure turbine stage and the last low
structural member. Geometrically the ratio of pressure stage use multiple tangs T-root type blade
maximum stress to the average or nominal stress is roots while the short and medium impulse and the
called as Stress Concentration Factor (SCF) and is low pressure stages use single tang T-root type blade
denoted by Kt [1]. roots. The design differs from one machine to the
The most comprehensive source of stress other and a lot depends on the design policy followed
concentration factors for commonly encountered by the specific manufacturer. For instance some
geometries has been compiled by Peterson. The companies use a large number of very small tangs on
relation between two and three dimensional stress their roots while others prefer to use only a few tangs.
concentration factors is made by assuming an There are various ways of fitting the roots into the
analogy exists between a circumferential fillet and a rotor. Some roots are fitted circumferentially into the
circumferential groove. This is the limitation of the rotor while others are fitted axially.
Peterson charts for estimation of the stress 3.0. BLADE TERMINOLOGY
concentration factors [2]. The optimization methods The blade terminology is as shown in Fig.1.

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manufacture the tang will be more which increases

the product cycle time. Hence the manufacturing cost
will be high. So to reduce the manufacturing cost,
time and the difficulty in manufacturing the tang, the
tang is removed in the modified blade and attained
the stresses within the limits or nearer to it.
7.0. DESIGN CONSIDERATIONS AND
APPROACH
The design rule margins are necessary for
uncertainties present in material, manufacturing,
assembly and on site operating conditions. In the
present work as per API standards 121% margin is
considered for 11% over-speed due to full fuel
throw–off condition. Additional margin of 15% is
Fig.1Blade Nomenclature
considered for manufacturing uncertainties [5].
4.0. OBJECTIVES OF THE PRESENT WORK
7.1. Factor of Safety limits:
The present work is divided into two parts:
• To identify the modifications of blade root
required using Peterson’s chart within the
linear zone to reduce the peak fillet stresses
in the blade and disk.
• Verify the same using Finite Element Yield strength at room temperature = 550 MPa
Analysis for two cases with and without the Yield strength at operating temperature (1000) = 540
tang in the blade. Firstly, to study the fillet MPa
stresses with tang and then Petersons chart is Factor of safety at operating speed = 1.68
used to reduce the peak stresses with the Factor of safety at overspeed = 1.15
modification to the butting area and Allowable stress at operating speed:
reducing the fillet radius. To conduct the σ minimum
sensitivity analysis for the fillet stresses in σ allowable=
blade and disk using FEA and then to (overspeed) 2 * (addiionalFOS )
compare the performance of blade and disk 540
fillet stresses for the above two cases. σ allowable =
5.0. BLADE ROOT MODEL 1.68
The original model of blade root and disk with tang is σ allowable = 321 MPa
as shown in the Fig.2. In this model the butting
Allowable stress at over speed:
surface of the tang in root and disk is the difficult part
σ min imum
to manufacture. Based on the optimization and with σ allowable =
the use of Petersons SCF chart the blade root is overspeed
modified as shown in the Fig.3. The tang which was
540
difficult to maintain the contact butting surface σ allowable =
between the disk and the root in the original model is 1.15
modified by removing the tang and attaining the
same satisfactory results. The geometry of the base
σ allowable = 469 MPa
line model and modified model are same in all the The axial deformation allowable is 2mm between
dimensions except the modifications in r, d, D and M. shroud and the casing for preventing the tip rub.
7.2. SCF using Peterson’s Chart [6]
Base line model with tang
For r/d and D/d ratio Kt is 2.1.
Modified model without tang
For r/d and D/d ratio Kt is 1.95.
Using Peterson’s Stress concentration factor chart
and the knowledge based design criteria the stress
concentration factor is reduced by modifying the
blade root dimensions of base line model and
Figs.2 & 3 Base line & Modified T-root model completely removing the tang in the modified model
6.0. BLADE WITH TANG are shown in Fig 4.
The blade and disk assembly with tang provides the
blade safety in taking off the blade from the disk. The
tang holds the blade coming or pulling out of the disk
when the centrifugal force is applied. The Vonmises
stresses are high at the tang which leads to crack
growth and leads to fracture near the tang. The main
difficulty in using the tang for the model is
manufacturing the tang with a small contact area Fig. 4 Blade root dimensions to be modified &
which is a very difficult as well as the time taken to modified dimensions
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σnom = 65.12 N/mm2

8.0. BLADE CENTRIFUGAL FORCE σmax =126.96 N/mm2
CALCULATION 9.0. FINITE ELEMENT MODEL
The governing equation for centrifugal force is:
F = mω2r (1)
Where m is the mass of the moving object, r is the
distance of the object from the centre of rotation
(radius of curvature) and ω is the angular velocity.
Consider a small segment of mass ‘δm’ of length
having width ‘δr’ at a distance r from the centre.
Then the equation for the force ‘δF’ on this small
segment is given by: Fig.5 FE Model of blade root and disk(Base line
δF = δmω2r (2) model)
Assuming the blade to have a constant cross sectional The geometry of one blade root with disk is modeled
and the finite element model of bladed disk is
area A and material density ρ , we can write:
generated using ANSYS 12.0 as shown in Fig.5.
δm = ρAδr
PLANE 42 Elements is considered for finite element
Then equation (2) is written has
model and meshed with defining the element size.
δF = ρA ω2rδr Surface to Surface contact pairs were created
Or formally it is written has between the blade and disk mating surfaces. The
dF = ρA ω2rdr (3) plane boundary conditions and different constraints
Let r1 be the radius of the disk and r2 is the distance are applied assuming the blade and disk are made up
between the centre of the disk and tip of the blade. of Chrome steel (X28CrMoNiV49) material having
Then, integrating equation (3) along the total length properties like Young’s modulus, density, Poisson’s
of the blade, the total force acting on the blade is ratio and yield strength are 2.1x105 MPa, 7.85x10-9
given by: kg/mm3 , 0.3 and 550 MPa are the input to ANSYS.
r2
The following discussions for the comparison and
F = ρA ω2 ∫ rdr design decision are based on the stresses for the base
r1 line model and the modified model. The geometry
So, F = ρA ω2 (r22-r12) /2 (4) shows the Vonmises stress of 125MPa and 1st
Principal stress of 133MPa at the tang in a blade root
The angular velocity is converted from revolutions and disk as shown in Fig.6. with the design speed of
per minute (rpm) to radians per second using the 3000rpm.
relationship:
2π n
ω= (5)
60
Knowing the values for the cross-sectional area,
density, angular velocity and radii, the force on one
blade is calculated. Once the force is calculated we
can estimate the nominal stress σ on the blade root
using the relation:
F Fig.6 Vonmises stress and First Principal stress
σ= (6)
A root with design speed of 3000rpm.
Where Aroot is the cross-sectional area of the blade For 121% over speed, the Vonmises stress is of
root [7] [8]. 184MPa and 1st Principal stress of 194MPa of the
8.1. Analytical Calculations Base line model are as shown in Fig.7.
The given are the following data.
Material Density, ρ= 7.85x10-9 kg/mm3
Speed, n = 300rpm
Angular velocity, ω = 314.2 rad/sec
Blade tip radius, r2 = 273mm
Disk radius, r1 = 250 mm
Blade length, (r2-r1) = 23 mm
Substituting the above values in equation (4), we get
force and stresses for Base line model as
F= 10906.8 N Fig. 7 Vonmises stress and First Principal stress
σnom=F/Aroot with over speed of 3630rpm.
σnom = 57.09 N/mm2 The Aspect ratio is checked for both baseline model
σmax =Κt σnom and the modified model. Aspect ratio is defined as
σmax =119.9 N/mm2 the ratios of the longest edge to the shortest edge.The
For Modified model Aspect ratio of the base line model were well within
F= 12640.7 N the limit of 5 as shown in the Fig.8 and Fig.9.

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Fig. 8 Aspect ratio at Fillets of the Disk
Fig.9 Aspect ratio at Fillets of the Blade Root.
Fig.10 FE Model of Modified blade root and disk.
Fig.11Vonmises stress and First Principal stress
with design speed of 3000rpm.
In the modified model the tang is eliminated and the
fillet is modified in which the blade root area will be
more and the stresses generated will be more in the
modified model. The FE model is as shown in Fig.10.
The modified Finite element model is analyzed by
applying the same boundary conditions and solved,
the results of the Vonmises stress is of 138MPa and
1st Principal stress is of 133MPa as shown in Fig.11.
The
Vonmises and 1st Principal stresses are maximum at
the blade root fillet because the area in the blade root
will be more when the tang is removed in the
modified model.
Fig.12 Vonmises stress and First Principal stress
with over speed of 3360rpm.
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For 121% over speed the Vonmises stress of 200MPa
and 1st Principal stress of 195MPa in the modified
model are as shown in Fig.12.
The Aspect ratio is also checked for the modified
blade root model without tang and it was well within
the limit of 5 for Quad elements as shown in Fig.13.
Fig. 13 Aspect ratio at Fillets of the Disk and
Blade Root (Modified).
CONCLUSION
The design considerations made to address the
structural integrity of the blade and the sensitivity
analysis for geometric parameters with aid of finite
element analysis has resulted in the following
observations during the course of study:
• Since the blade root geometry was straight root,
the design principles of Peterson’s Stress
concentration factor chart was effectively
utilized to achieve the blade root dimensions for
reduced stress concentration factor and fillet
stresses comparatively for two cases.
• The base line model and the modified root model
was subjected to centrifugal loads and the
resulting centrifugal stress was compared with
hand calculations by which it can be concluded
that effective usage of blade roots without tang
can reduce the uncertainties in manufacturing
and malfunctioning of tang root blades which are
well within the design considerations.
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