Fraunhofer Institute for Mechanics of Materials IWMDigITecT joint project of the Turbo Working Group is investigating technological issues that focus on the changed requirements profile of turbomachinery in the energy transition.
Digitization and interdisciplinary design technologies for turbomachinery for the energy transition
Ongoing research project
Project description
One of these issues stems from increasing demands on future and existing gas turbine (GT) power plants as a result of the growing share of renewable energy. This requires GT plants to be increasingly flexible in operation, which means that significantly more operating cycles with transient start-up and shutdown processes can be expected, promoting materials fatigue and crack propagation. A key aspect here is the assessment of the criticality of manufacturing-related defects and their impact on the service life of components.
Fraunhofer IWM subproject:
In work package (WP) 4.1 of DigITecT, a generalized transferable model is to be developed for describing crack nucleation and for probabilistic quantification of the service life of components with manufacturing-related defects. The model will draw on conventional materials tests and the characteristic values determined in these tests, such as strain-Wöhler curves, cyclic crack propagation curves, and threshold values, and will help to avoid complex and costly tests on large samples with defects. Findings from previous projects carried out in cooperation between Siemens Energy and Fraunhofer IWM will also be taken into account. The goal is to more accurately quantify crack nucleation and crack growth rates and thus provide a more accurate overall service life description of fracture-critical components with manufacturing-related defects.
Transfer of project results to the following Fraunhofer IWM R&D services for companies:
- Quantification of crack nucleation phase in manufacturing-related defects
- More accurate service life description of fracture-critical components with manufacturing-related defects
- Extension of fracture assessment methods to non-crack-like defects
