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2013
Conference Paper
Titel
Laser heat treatment technologies for wear protection of steam turbine blades
Abstract
Despite worldwide efforts for application of new technologies for power generation steam turbines play and will play a dominant role in this field. Some of these new technologies still need steam turbines anyway. An issue what has influence on lifetime and efficiency of steam turbines is the droplet erosion wear which occurs mainly in the LP stage of a steam turbine where steam contains water droplets. These droplets erode the inlet edge of the turbine blades. Wear protection of these blades therefore is a topic engineers are engaged in since many years. Most frequently applied materials are Chromium alloyed hardenable steels. Other materials, specifically for high loaded last stage blades are precipitation hardenable steels and Titanium. Fraunhofer IWS has developed laser heat treatment technologies for the mentioned steel materials. These technologies have been applied frequently at turbine blades of many different manufacturers. Those blades are running successfully in many power stations all over the world. Finally these technologies became accepted as the leading technologies for that kind of application. Additionally Fraunhofer IWS developed equipment for applying these technologies what runs successfully in the lab since hundreds of test blades but also at a first industrial customer since 2013. The presentation gives an overview about the background of the application and the main details of the developed hardening technologies for steel turbine blades.