Development of the monoblock rotor for large scale LP turbine

One of the important points in large steam turbines is the long last stage blades. So far, rotor disks were shrink-fitted to a shaft, but recently, the operation of steam turbines requires frequent start and stop, and is subjected to frequent load variation. In order to improve the reliability of steam turbines drastically under such situation, the large rotors of one-body forging type have been demanded. Hitachi Ltd. Manufactured a large rotor of one-body forging type for trial, and in order to confirm its reliability, the rotation test simulating the temperature distribution in the operation of steam turbines was carried out. The large material must be thoroughly forged to the inner part, and the effect of heat treatment reaches to the whole body, thus the prescribed chemical composition and mechanical properties must be obtained. The material must be homogeneous and stable to the thermal effect in operation. The largest outside diameter of the rotor is about 2.5 m, the shaft length is 12 m, and the finished weight is 220 t. A 500 t ingot of Ni-Cr-Mo-V steel was used. As the results of various tests, it was confirmed that the material was clean and homogeneous, and had good mechanical properties. Also the material was sufficiently thermally stable in the heating deflection measurement. In the high speed rotation test at the actual temperature, the vibration of the rotor was very small, and the good result was obtained. (Kako, I.)