Vibration analysis of a steam turbine blade

ABSTRACT Blade failure is a common problem of a steam turbine and it’s failure in-service results in safety risks, repair cost and non operational revenue losses. Thus, the reliability of these blades is very important for the successful operation of a steam turbine. Dynamic analysis of a steam turbine blade in computational environment is carried out in the present work. In order to gain physical insight into the flexural dynamics of such turbine blades with the inclusion of the rotor dynamic effect, the turbine blade was approximated as a twisted cantilever beam with an asymmetric aerofoil cross-section fixed on a rigid rotor disk. Methods to validate the computational procedures for cantilever beam were established. Similar computational procedures were leveraged for the turbine blade. Critical speeds were obtained for different excitations.