Rotor blades are the highest thermal-mechanical loaded components of gas turbines. Their service life is limited by interaction of creep, low cycle fatigue (LCF), high cycle fatigue (HCF) and surface attack. Because assurance of adequate HCF strength of the rotor blade is an important issue of the blade design the European project PREMECCY has been started by the European aircraft engine manufacturers and research institutes to enhance the predictive methods for combined cycle fatigue (CCF), as a superposition of HCF and LCF. Although today’s predictive methods ensure safe blade design, there are certain shortcomings of assessing fatigue life with Haigh or “modified Goodman diagrams”, such as isolated HCF assessment as well as uni-axial and off-resonant testing. HCF and LCF are considered without taking into account their interaction. PREMECCY is aimed to deliver new and improved CCF prediction methods for exploitation in the industrial design process. Beside development of predictive methods the authors are involved in the design and testing of advanced specimens representing rotor blade features. In this connection the paper presents a novel test specimen type and a unique hot gas rig for CCF feature test at mechanical and ambient representative conditions.

The European project PREMECCY has been conducted to enhance predictive methods for combined cycle fatigue (CCF) of gas turbine blades, i.e. interaction of low cycle fatigue (LCF) and high cycle fatigue (HCF). While design of CCF feature tests, comprising specimen and test rig design, has already been reported, this paper presents experimental HCF/ CCF test results and progress in life prediction. Besides standard lab specimen tests for characterization of single crystal and conventional cast material, also advanced specimens representing critical rotor blade features were tested in a hot gas rig. Based on these experimental data an extended Cailletaud material model for stress-strain analysis has been calibrated and combined with a modified ONERA damage model for creep-fatigue interaction to estimate the lifetime of the advanced test specimens. The model extensions address the effect of ratcheting, which is typical for CMSX-4 at asymmetric cyclic loading at elevated temperature. Caused by limitations of the Armstrong-Frederick kinematic hardening rule regarding ratcheting, three models for improved ratcheting simulation of isotropic material were adopted to anisotropic material. In addition multiple Norton-flow rules for the viscous part of the model are combined with time recovery terms in the kinematic hardening evolution to represent the behaviour of single crystal material in high temperature environment at a wide range of strain rates. Hence, an improved model for stress-strain and lifetime prediction for single crystals has been developed.