Wear 303 (2013) 83–86

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Experimental investigation of droplet size influence on low pressure

steam turbine blade erosion
M. Ahmad n, M. Schatz, M.V. Casey
University of Stuttgart, Institute of Thermal Turbomachinery and Machinery Laboratory, Pfaffenwaldring 6, 70569 Stuttgart, Germany

art ic l e i nf o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In the last stages of steam turbines, large droplets (so-called coarse water) are generated from the wet
Received 3 August 2012 steam flow. These droplets collide with the following rotating blades with almost the peripheral speed of
Received in revised form the rotor. This high speed impact is perceived in the form of erosion of low pressure steam turbine
5 March 2013
blades. Among others, impacting droplet size is a key parameter contributing to the erosion of low-
Accepted 7 March 2013
Available online 15 March 2013
pressure steam turbine blades. At the Institute of Thermal Turbomachinery and Machinery Laboratory
(ITSM) Stuttgart, the effect of droplet size on the erosion of steam turbine blade has been investigated
Keywords: with the help of an erosion test rig. The experiments confirm that the erosion increases with increasing
Erosion droplet sizes. It is also found that volume loss per droplet impact increases with droplet size with a
Droplet impact
simple power law relation Erosion ~Dndroplet where value of n is found to be 3.2 up to 3.5 for common
Steam turbine
blade materials.
Droplet size
& 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction During the re-entrainment, the droplets are accelerated by the

The problem of steam turbine blade erosion is not new and
many studies have already highlighted different aspects of this
issue. It is dependent on a variety of parameters, the most
important being droplet size and velocity as well as peripheral
speed of the rotor at the location of droplet impact. Out of these
three, only blade speed is actually known, whereas the droplet size
and velocity is extremely difficult to measure in situ and can thus
only be estimated based on theoretical considerations.
Concerning the origin of large droplets in steam turbines, it is
known that some of the fog droplets that are formed within the
process of nucleation and subsequent condensation within the
course of expansion in the turbine are deposited on the blade
surfaces. Dominant mechanisms for deposition are either turbu-
lent diffusion, which applies for very small droplets, or inertia
effects. In contrast to the rotor, where the intercepted condensate
is centrifuged out toward the casing, small rivulets are formed in
the guide vanes that are driven to the blade trailing edges by the
flow. There, the condensate accumulates until a re-entrainment
into the main flow occurs, followed by the formation of a spray
of larger droplets (often referred to as coarse water) due to shear
forces between the main flow and the droplets. The resulting
droplet diameter is thought to be in the region of 100–500 mm.
n
Corresponding author. Present address: Berhta von Suttner Allee 4 77933 Lahr,
Germany.
Tel.: þ 49 17631117841; fax: þ 49 71168569425.
E-mail address: mabbwp@gmail.com (M. Ahmad).
main flow. However, as the drag force acting on a coarse water
droplet is again dependent on the droplet size, the actual droplet
velocity and thus the impact velocity on a rotor blade can only be
estimated. A detailed description of theory of erosion in steam
turbines, related parameters and counter measures can be found
in [1–8].
As a consequence, the study of blade erosion and erosion assess-
ment of different materials has to face a large variety of boundary
conditions, all of which have an influence on the occurrence and the
course of material erosion.
To investigate the influence of different erosion parameters,
a detailed experimental study is conducted at the Institute of
Thermal Turbomachinery at the University of Stuttgart with the
help of an erosion test rig. The details of this erosion rig can be
found in [9,10].
In the present study, it is tried to find out the effect of droplet
size on the erosion process by using a systematic approach. Some
authors [6,11–13] already found a strong influence of droplet size
on erosion by an increased erosion rate with increasing droplet
sizes. The influence of droplet size on the extent of erosion has
been tried to explain by the effective impact lengths which
become smaller with smaller droplets [11] and by the impact
pressure duration which increases with bigger droplets [14].
Moreover Zhou et al. numerically found that the amount of both
water hammer pressure and the stress penetrated into the solid is
independent of droplet size. On the other hand, the duration of
water hammer pressure and the depth of stress penetration into
the solid are found to be a linear function of droplet size [15].

0043-1648/$ - see front matter & 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.wear.2013.03.013
84 M. Ahmad et al. / Wear 303 (2013) 83–86

2. Experimental results

In the current research study, a series of experiments are

performed to explore the effect of droplet size on erosion resistance.
In the first approach, the range of droplet sizes that reach the last
stage blades in steam turbines is calculated by the flow conditions
measured in a model steam turbine scaled on 1:4 to a real steam
turbine [1] and located in ITSM, University of Stuttgart. To calculate
the secondary droplet size, the Reitz and Diwakar Break-up Model
[16] has been used which describes the stable particle size after
secondary atomisation as follows:
12s
Dstable ¼ ð1Þ
ρU 2
where
Fig. 1. Mean droplet sizes measured at different flow rates using different nozzle
bore sizes.
Dstable stable droplet size
s surface tension
ρ density of steam
U absolute droplet speed are selected so that a mean droplet size of 100 mm up to 500 mm can
be achieved in different experiments. The details of these experi-
By applying the above break-up model at different blade heights of ments are shown in Table 2. For normal erosion testing, test no. 5
the last low-pressure blade in the model steam turbine and by using represents the standard testing conditions.
the measured flow conditions at these span heights, a range of droplet In the experiments described in Table 2, three steel alloys
sizes prevalent at each blade height of the last blade in the model X20Cr13, X5CrNiCuNb16-4, X10CrNiMoV12-2-2 and one titanium
steam turbine is calculated and is shown in Table 1. According to these alloy Ti6Al4V are tested at a mean droplet size of 200 mm, 300 mm,
calculations, droplets with a typical size of approximately 100 mm up 375 mm and 500 mm and at a flow rate of 0.136 l/s, 0.108 l/s, 0.114 l/s
to 500 mm can be present in the last stages of steam turbines. These and 0.058 l/s respectively. The details of above materials tested in
particles collide with the following rotating blades with an impact this study are given in Table 3. In order to make the experiments
speed which is basically governed by the circumferential speed of the comparable, a standard constant impact speed of 488 m/s is
blade. The droplet sizes measured in the above study are used as the maintained in all the experiments. The results (Fig. 2) are then
boundary conditions in the present experiments. compared with the results of a standard test using a mean droplet
To reach the practically relevant droplet size range in the test size of 100 mm, a flow rate of 0.114 l/s and the standard impact
rig, droplet size is intentionally varied in the erosion test rig by speed of 488 ms. As all the tests are carried out at different flow
changing the pressure drop at the nozzle tip which is a function of rates, the results are compared on the basis of impacting droplet
nozzle bore size and flow rate through the nozzle as given by number rather than of testing time.
Eq. (2). According to our experimental results, if all the other parameters
  are kept constant, then erosion seems to increase if the impacting
q 2 droplet size is increased (Fig. 2). The erosion resistance of above
ΔP ¼ 8ρ 2
ð2Þ
πDo materials can be extracted from these diagrams by comparing the
where materials at a particular droplet size. In the next step, the influence of
droplet size on erosion is assessed by calculating erosion of different
ΔP pressure drop materials in volume loss per single droplet impact. It is found that
ρ density of water volume loss for a single droplet impact increases with droplet size by
q volumetric flow rate a simple power law relation Erosion ~Dnimpact where value of n is
Do nozzle diameter found to be 3.2–3.5 for steam turbine blade materials (Fig. 3).
The value of n is in good agreement with some other studies
Different commercial nozzles from the company “Schlick Düsen” [12,13] where value of n is found to be in the range of 4–5. The
are selected and characteristics of these nozzles at different operat value of exponent n for different materials is given in Table 3. In
ing pressures are measured with the help of a dual Phase Doppler order to compare the influence of both droplet speed and size on
Anemometer (PDA) system. In this way, mean droplet sizes at erosion, Table 3 also includes the exponents for impact velocity
different operating pressures and hence different flow rates can be that were derived in a previous study [10].
measured from these nozzles (Fig. 1). Upon basis of these results, Here it is interesting to note that if the droplet size is increased
different feasible combinations of flow rates and nozzle bore sizes from 100 mm to 500 mm, then for the same quantity of water,
number of droplets decreases by a factor of 125. So if a fixed
Table 1
volume of water is divided into 100 mm and 500 mm droplets, then
Droplet sizes calculated at different blade heights of the last rotor blade row in more erosion will happen for 500 mm setup although it has 125
model steam turbine. times less droplet impacts than 100 mm setup. In other words,
a single 500 mm droplet will result in more erosion than 125
Blade span Absolute droplet speed U Pressure P Density ρ Droplet
droplets with a diameter of 100 mm keeping all the other para-
diameter
[%] [m/s] [kPa] [kg/m3] [mm] meters constant. This fact may lead to the assumption of a
threshold droplet size, similar to threshold velocity, below which
43 143 13.5 0.097 669 practically no erosion occurs. This is somehow similar to fatigue in
78 211 17.0 0.118 252 materials where a high magnitude stress requires less number of
93 265 18.8 0.126 149
100 353 19.3 0.127 83
cycles to failure as compared to a relatively low magnitude stress.
It is further explained by converting the impact pressure into
 M. Ahmad et al. / Wear 303 (2013) 83–86 85

Table 2
Details of experiments performed with different droplet sizes.

Test Flow rate Nozzle bore size Sauter mean diameter D32 Shaft speed (sprayer) Shaft speed (specimen) Droplet absolute speed Impact speed
# [l/s] [mm] [mm] [rpm] [rpm] [m/s] [m/s]

1 0.058 1.7 500 8750 9200 211 488

2 0.114 1.7 375 8750 9200 211 488
3 0.108 1.5 300 8750 9200 213 488
4 0.136 1.5 200 8750 9200 214 488
5 0.114 1.0 100 8750 8750 220 488

Table 3
Details of materials tested in the erosion test rig along with their velocity and droplet size exponents.

Material Density Surface hardness Young's modulus E Impact velocity dependence Erosion ~V n1
impact Droplet size dependence Erosion ¼ kV n2
impact
[g/cm3] [HV-10] [GPa] n1 k n2

−24
X20Cr13 7.71 271 216 3.5 2  10 3.2
X5CrNiCuNb16-4 7.76 328 200 3.4 2  10−24 3.2
X10CrNiMoV12-2-2 7.82 337 210 – 10−24 3.3
Ti6Al4V 4.42 334 110 5.3 10−25 3.5

Fig. 2. Erosion behaviour of X20Cr13 (top left), X5CrNiCuNb16-4 (top right), X10CrNiMoV12-2-2 (bottom left) and Ti6Al4V (bottom right) at different droplet sizes tested at
the impact speed of 488 m/s. The legend of droplet sizes given is applicable for all diagrams.

impact force by using Eq. (3) [10].

π 
F impact ¼ P impact Aimpact ¼ ρl vimpact cl D2impact ð3Þ
4
where

Fimpact impact force

Pimpact impact pressure
cl shock speed in liquid
Aimpact area of impact
Dimpact diameter of impacting area–droplet diameter
ρl liquid density
νimpact impact velocity

In the next step, an equivalent erosion curve is drawn for the steel Fig. 3. Influence of erosion on droplet size assessed in the form of volume loss per
alloy X20 and X10 at different impacting droplet sizes (impacting droplet impact.
86 M. Ahmad et al. / Wear 303 (2013) 83–86
Fig. 4. Equivalent erosion curve for X20 and X10 at different droplet sizes and
corresponding number of impacts measured at the impact speed of 488 m/s.
forces) and corresponding number of impacts required for the
equivalent erosion at the impact speed of 488 m/s (Fig. 4). According
to Fig. 4, to attain the same magnitude of erosion, bigger particles
having bigger impact forces need significantly less number of
impacts as compared to the smaller particles having smaller impact
forces. The exact shape of this relationship depends, among other
parameters, upon the nature of material as well as the magnitude of
the impact force. It is also found that the scatter between two
materials tends to increase for the smaller droplet sizes and higher
impact numbers mainly due to significantly increased droplet
impacts at these conditions.
3. Conclusions
 By using the Reitz and Diwakar Break-up Model and flow
conditions in the last stage of a model steam turbine, it is
found that the diameter of so-called coarse water droplets just
before the last stage blade is varying along the blade height
within the range of around 100–500 mm
 In a rotating erosion test rig, it is experimentally proved that
impacting droplet size has a strong influence on erosion of low-
pressure steam turbine blades with bigger particles causing
higher erosion. The effect of droplet size on erosion can be
presented by a simple power law relation Erosion~Dnimpact
where value of n is found to be around 3.2–3.5 for most steam
turbine blade materials. Together with the effect of impact
speed on erosion, the erosion pattern of a steam turbine blade
may significantly change.
 By drawing the equivalent erosion curves for different blade
materials at different droplet sizes, it is shown that considerably
fewer impacts of bigger droplets are necessary to have the same
magnitude of erosion that is caused by smaller droplets. This
tendency of droplet impact erosion can be approached to find out a
threshold droplet size below which no erosion occurs at relevant
impacts speeds.
Acknowledgements
This research work has been financed by the federal state
Baden-Wuerttemberg and the Siemens AG, Energy Sector, within
a project KW21-BW32 “Power Plants for the 21st Century”. The
authors wish to thank Siemens AG, Energy Sector, Mülheim an der
Ruhr for the permission to publish this paper.
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