New Materials for Steam Turbines

Project Number 217

The investigations to determine the material characteristics of modern turbine materials commenced in the research project 158 will be continued with the goal of reliable assessment of the long term behaviour of highly stressed turbine shafts and turbine casings as well as valves and fittings.

This will achieve a testing time of about 53,000 hours for most components, permitting extrapolation to at least 150,000 operating hours. This extrapolation will be supported by additional tests at 625 °C. Together with the available results from the COST program, which are determined with samples of the pilot components which now have already reached 60,000 to 70,000 hours, it will probably also be possible to make an extrapolation to 200,000 hours for the production components.

The test results achieved for the pilot components during the term of the project 158 also do not yet permit any reliable comparison with the data available from smaller components tested for a longer time, so that they also do not permit any assessment of the suitability of these steel grades for larger components.

A good basis for this assessment will be established by the extension of the testing time of samples of these two components by a further 24,000 hours.

The following benefits for the energy supply concern are expected from the execution of this research project:

  • Thorough examination of numerous production components permits verification of the design characteristics for 600 °C power plants. This leads to high availability and long life of the plants.
  • The higher steam parameters improve the thermal power efficiency and reduce the CO2 emission of the plants.
  • The joint venture procurement of the results ensures direct knowledge transfer between the power plant operators and the turbine manufacturers.
  • Within the scope of the research project the turbine manufacturers provide information with respect to the status of other national and international research projects as well as all relevant international meetings concerned with new development of power plant materials (COST 522, THERMIE, MARCKO, etc.).