Steam Turbine Design, Failure Modes, Operations and Maintenance

"MODULE 1 – Steam Turbine Design, Failure Modes, and Advanced Troubleshooting Industry failure statistics-locating the areas of highest risk
• Steam turbine design features – key features for your unit and technology advancements
• Selecting the right unit – design, selection, sizing and flexibility"
Common failure modes for steam turbines –explained, impacted components, how to manage and impact of flexible operations on each failure mode
High Cycle Fatigue
Low Cycle Fatigue
Stress Corrosion Cracking
Solid Particle Erosion
Water Droplet Erosion
Creep and Embrittlement
Foreign Object Damage
• Advanced Troubleshooting – detecting and mitigating before manifesting into a forced outage
• Turbine vibration – unlocking the secrets of rotor lateral and torsional vibration, balancing
• Nondestructive testing – most effective nondestructive inspections to detect known failure modes
• OEM Technical Advisories/Service Bulletins – management and integration into outage scopes

MODULE 2 – Steam Turbine Performance and Optimization (ASME PTC 6)
Understanding the Code and how to complete a test
• Typical findings – cycle isolation (leaking drains, bleed valves, etc.), performance degradation
• How to monitor your plant and track degradation over time and compare to industry norms
• “No-brainers” to regain lost capacity – upgraded sealing technologies, blade path repairs and smoothing
• Turbine operational audits – how to identify and avoid common operational pitfalls
• Understanding correction curves to compare to the original unit design point
• Condenser performance and how to optimize
• Options for retrofitting and upgrades to improve unit performance and heat rate

MODULE 3 – Steam Turbine Operations and Maintenance

• Impact of renewable energy and gas prices on steam turbine assets
Ultra-Minimum Load
Two-Shift Cycling
• Steam turbine rotor retrofits – key considerations, performance benefits, technology enhancements
• Emergent issues on combined-cycle steam turbines – unplanned findings early in unit life on both rotor and casings
• Strategies to safely reduce cold start times – benefits of steam seal preheat and modified hold speeds/times
• Material sampling and life extension assessments – fix only what is broken
• Targeted outage repairs – how to get back online with as little spend, time and risk as possible
• Repair options and considerations – casing cracking, stress corrosion cracking, rotor bow, solid particle erosion and water droplet erosion, foreign object damage
• Outage planning and risk assessments for key turbine hardware – how to optimize outage intervals based on current hardware condition
• Unit Health Monitoring – What to monitor and common findings
• Steam Turbine Maintenance – Major maintenance, routine and preventative maintenance, oil analysis
Practical Case Studies
• Blade failures and repair strategies – high-cycle fatigue, low-cycle fatigue, aeroelastic vibration, water droplet erosion and solid particle erosion
• Stress corrosion cracking and repair options
Casing cracking
• Rotor shaft cracking
• Rotor bow repairs
• Generator boresonic inspection interval extensions
• Remaining life studies – creep, low-cycle fatigue, stress corrosion cracking