The deterministic prediction of failure of low pressure steam turbine disks

Localized corrosion phenomena, including pitting corrosion, stress corrosion cracking, and corrosion fatigue, are the principal causes of corrosion-induced damage in electric power generating facilities and typically result in more than 50% of the unscheduled outages. Prediction of damage, so that repairs and inspections can be made during scheduled outages, could have an enormous impact on the economics of electric power generation. To date, prediction of corrosion damage has been made on the basis of empirical/statistical methods that have proven to be insufficiently robust and accurate to form the basis for the desired inspection/repair protocol. In this paper, we describe a deterministic method for predicting localized corrosion damage. We have used the method to illustrate how pitting corrosion initiates stress corrosion cracking (SCC) for low pressure steam turbine disks downstream of the Wilson line, where a thin condensed liquid layer exists on the steel disk surfaces. Our calculations show that the SCC initiation and propagation are sensitive to the oxygen content of the steam, the environment in the thin liquid condensed layer, and the stresses that the disk experiences in service