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Blade Tenon Peening PDF
Blade Tenon Peening PDF
Steam Turbines
BARNEY McLAUGHLIN Recently, Sulzer Hickham – a Sulzer Turbomachinery
SULZER TURBO- Services company – entered the market for repair and
MACHINERY SERVICES service of very large steam turbines. The reblading of
a 625-MW steam turbine generator exhibits Sulzer
Hickham’s ability to respond rapidly to the customer’s
demand, find and apply innovative repair techniques,
as well as offer a favorable price.
onto the blades. A peening ma- What systems will be needed to examined under magnification,
chine hits on the tenons, thus up- execute the heating, peening, and hardness measurements were
setting them like a rivet (Fig. 3). and qualifying of the tenons? performed.
The challenge in the particular
case of this big steam turbine was Trials with Test Samples Peening Finished without
the very large tenon size and the Samples of the tenons and shrouds Incident
ability to incorporate semi-auto- were manufactured from identical Following the arrival of the rotors
matic upsetting procedures. Con- material. The mock-up work be- in the shop and the deblading, the
sistency in upsetting (peening) of gan using hand-held torches to reblading process on the control
each tenon is the key to a success- heat the tenon prior to peening. stage began as scheduled. Togeth-
ful reblading operation. This in- From torches, the engineering er with a newly designed peening
cludes heating of the tenons to team moved to high-frequency support structure, the semi-auto-
make them sufficiently ductile, induction heating. It proved to be matic peening system allowed the
with the temperature of the metal the best method, however, se- task to be completed on time and
being a critical parameter. quencing of the heating coil over without incident.
Sulzer Hickham was awarded the the tenon with the peening ma- Accurate positioning of the tenon
work with a turnaround time of chine became an issue. Several
three weeks in shop. The research coils were destroyed in the mock-
2 The contract also
and development on the large- up process. Eventually electronic
included the repair
tenon peening was begun two limit switches were wired into the of two identical low-
weeks before the rotors were system, and the peening process pressure rotors.
scheduled to arrive. approached the semi-automatic
The engineering team faced the regime.
following issues: Control of the tenon heating de-
Is the existing peening equip- pended upon accurate measure-
ment adequate to peen the large ment. By using an infrared device,
tenons? the peening was controlled in a
How can the tenons be heated – narrow range.
consistently and uniformly? Part of the qualification process in-
How can the tenon temperature volved Sulzer Hickham’s metal-
be ensured during the peening lurgical laboratory. The sample
process? peened tenons were sectioned and
3 A tenon, heated
by induction,
is upset by the
peening machine
3
and thus secures
the shroud over
the blades.
4
1 Tenon before
peening CONTACT
2 Heating coil Hickham Industries, Inc.
2
3 Peening machine Barney F. McLaughlin
4 Shroud
11518 Old La Porte Rd.
5 Blade
La Porte, TX 77571
6 Tenon after
peening USA
Phone +1 (1)713-567 27 13
Fax +1 (1)713-567 28 30
1 5 6 barney.mclaughlin
@hickham.com