Experimental investigation on the creep and low cycle fatigue behaviors of a serviced turbine blade

This paper experimentally investigated the creep and fatigue behaviors of a low-pressure turbine (LPT) blade with 600 hours of service using a novel test system. Pure low cycle fatigue (LCF), pure creep and creep-fatigue interaction (CFI) experiments on the full-scale serviced blades were conducted respectively. Test results showed that the increasing of deformation amplitude was divided into three stages under both pure LCF and creep-fatigue loadings. The deformation of each blade increased rapidly until failure when the test cycle exceeded the 80% of their overall life under the pure LCF and CFI condition. The hold period in creep-fatigue tests shortens the first stage of whole life and has no influence on the proportion of crack initiation life to overall life. The fractures in pure LCF, pure creep and creep-fatigue tests emerged transgranular, intergranular and both transgranular and intergranular behaviors respectively. The crack initiated and propagated in a specific zone of the blade under all the experimental loadings, which limited its creep-fatigue resistance. At last, the remaining life of turbine blade was estimated conservatively by introducing the safety limit into a statistical method.