Thermostructural Analysis of Steam Turbine in Prewarming Operation With Hot Air

In pursuit of flexibility improvements and extension of lifetime, a concept to prewarm steam turbines using hot air was developed. In order to further optimize the prewarming operation, an extensive numerical investigation is conducted to determine the time-dependent temperature and stress fields. In this work, the transient thermal and structural analyses of an IP 19-stage steam turbine in prewarming operation with hot air are presented. Based on the previous investigations, a hybrid finite element method (HFEM-numerical finite element method (FEM) and analytical) approach especially developed for this purpose is applied to efficiently calculate the solid body temperatures of a steam turbine in predefined prewarming scenarios. The HFEM model utilizes the Nusselt number correlations to describe the heat transfer between the hot air and the turbine components in the flow channel. These correlations were developed based on unsteady conjugate heat transfer (CHT) simulations of multistage turbine models. In addition, most of the thermal energy in turbine prewarming operation is transferred through vanes and blades. Therefore, the HFEM approach considers the thermal contact resistance (TCR) on the surfaces between vanes/casing and blades/rotor. After the calibration of the HFEM model with experimental data based on measurements of the natural cooling curve, the prewarming processes for different prewarming scenarios are simulated. Subsequently, the obtained temperature fields are imported to an FEM model in order to conduct a structural analysis, which, among other variables, includes the values and locations of highest stresses and displacements.