The demand for higher plant cycling operation and reduced life-cycle costs are the main drivers for the design and assessment of turbine components today. Heavy cyclic loading increases the potential of fully utilizing the fatigue capabilities of the material which might lead to crack initiation and subsequent crack propagation.
Fracture mechanics methods and evaluation concepts are widely applied to assess the integrity of components with defects or crack-like findings. The realistic modelling of the failure mechanism plays a key role for the accurate prediction of crack sizes at failure state.
A basic treatment of material toughness typically leads to conservative assessments for components with sufficient ductility. A standard approach to describe material behavior with high ductility is to use the start of stable crack extension as a dimensioning parameter for the analysis. By definition a critical condition for a component is reached when the crack driving force is equal to the characteristic material parameter. On the other hand, advanced analysis methods allow determination of the instability point (ductile tearing analysis).
This paper will discuss two cases for practical analysis from steam turbine design showing clear advantages for service application by using advanced analysis methods.
