Assessing of Hot Gas Parts Using Advanced Eddy Current Testing Methods

The turbine section of state-of-the-art industrial gas turbines is exposed to the most severe conditions such as high temperatures, corrosive environments and high mechanical stresses for several tens of thousands of hours. To withstand these conditions, turbine blades and vanes have become the most sophisticated parts. This, together with advanced manufacturing technologies, strict quality requirements and maximum reliability demands, affects costs. Different design features have been realized in the past to meet the ambitious requirements, and are also under constant development. Blades and vanes made of superalloys with directionally-solidified or single-crystal structure are used to provide highest strengths at temperatures as near as possible to the hot gas temperature. The high integrity and conformity of the parts are required to realize the material potential. Different advanced diagnostic methods are applied to ensure these over time. Another way to increase the operating temperatures of gas turbines is the application of corrosion and thermal protection coatings for one or several rows of the blades and vanes. Deviations in the specified coating thickness tend to reduce the lifetime of such coatings significantly. Hence, the monitoring of this property during the manufacturing requires special nondestructive diagnostic measures. Service exposed parts, which need to be refurbished when the protective coatings are spent, offer a significant operation potential after refurbishment. To guarantee the design parameters during the next service interval, several nondestructive material evaluation methods are available for the necessary part property assessment. Multifrequency Eddy Current has proven itself as an appropriate NDE technique to accomplish the above diagnostic requirements. The paper will give an overview of results gained at Siemens with model based Eddy Current methods using measurement systems developed by Jentek Sensors Inc., USA, and CESI, Italy. Potential applications and limitations of the method also will be discussed.Copyright © 2008 by ASME