Compressive residual stresses as a preventive measure against stress corrosion cracking on turbine components

Disk type low pressure turbine rotors have been designed for a large variety of power plant applications. Developing disk type rotors required a concerted effort to design a shaft/disk shrink fit with a minimum of tensile stress concentrations in order to aim for the lowest possible susceptibility to corrosive attack, i.e. stress corrosion cracking. As a result of stresses, the regions of greatest concern are the shrink fit boundaries and the keyways of turbine disks. These stresses are caused by service loading, i.e. centrifugal and shrinkage stresses and by manufacturing procedure, i.e. residual stresses. The compressive residual stresses partly compensate the tensile service stresses so that an increase of compressive residual stresses decreases the whole stress state of the component. Special manufacturing procedures, e.g. accelerated cooling after tempering can induce compressive residual stresses up to about 400 MPa in the hub bore region of turbine disk