Finite Element Stress Analysis of a Typical Steam Turbine Blade

Low pressure turbine is very critical from strength point of view because of the high centrifugal and aerodynamic loading. The stress in these highly twisted blades is required to be evaluated accurately in order to avoid blade failures and cracking. In the present work, effect of pressure loading on the blade surface and centrifugal loading on the steady state stress has been studied.3D blades from the given profile data for the last stage of a typical steam turbine is generated by stacking 2D profile sections in a customized software including blade root attachment. The generated model is meshed in ANSYS package driven by customized software and the pressure distribution is mapped on the blade surface. Steady state stress analysis generated to understand the dynamic behavior of the blade.