Fully reversed strain controlled low cycle fatigue and creep-fatigue interaction tests have been performed at ±0.7% strain amplitude and at three different temperatures (400°C, 500°C and 600°C) to investigate the cyclic behaviour of a FV566 martensitic turbine steel. From a material point of view, the hysteresis mechanical responses have demonstrated cyclic hardening at the running-in stage and subsequent, hysteresis cyclic softening during the rest of the material life. The relaxation and energy behaviours have shown a rapid decrease at the very beginning of loading followed by quasi-stabilisation throughout the test. A unified, temperature-and rate-dependent visco-plastic model was then developed and implemented into the Abaqus finite element (FE) code through a user defined subroutine (UMAT). The material parameters in the model were determined via an optimisation procedure based on a genetic solver. The multi-axial form of the constitutive model developed was demonstrated by analysing the thermomechanical responses of an industrial gas turbine rotor subjected to in-service conditions. A sub-modelling technique was used to optimise the FEA. A 2D global model of the rotor with a 3D sub-model of the second stage of the low pressure turbine were then analysed in turn. The complex transient stress and accumulated plastic strain fields were investigated under realistic thermo-mechanical fatigue loading (start-up and shutdown power plant loads). The sub-model was then used for local analysis leading to identification of potential crack initiation sites for the presented types of blade roots.

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This paper presents an elasto-visco-plastic finite element modelling framework including the associated UMAT codes to investigate the high temperature behaviour of gas turbine rotor steels. The model used in the FE study is an improved and unified multi-axial Chaboche-Lemaitre model which takes into account non-linear kinematic and isotropic hardening. The computational methodology is a three-dimensional framework following an implicit formulation and based on a radial return mapping algorithm. The UMAT is calibrated and validated across isothermal hold-time cyclic tests. The methodology developed is applied to a classical industrial gas turbine rotor where the study focuses its attention on the deformation heterogeneities and critical high stress areas within the rotor structure. The effect of thermal transients and geometry singularities on the development of residual stresses is underlined. Finally, the potential improvements and extensions of such FE viscoplastic analysis is discussed.

An integrated life assessment procedure for structures operating under thermomechanical loading has been developed. The methodology uses a viscoplasticity based framework combined with the R5 life assessment code. The viscoplastic constitutive model used for the stress-strain analysis is derived from the Chaboche-Lemaitre formulation that allows to directly obtain the required parameters for the R5 assessment as stress relaxation per cycle and the elastic follow-up factor. The R5 procedure is therefore significantly simplified. The proposed life assessment procedure is demonstrated on a martensitic steel (FV566) industrial gas turbine rotor under a typical start up -shut down operation. The effect of creep-fatigue interaction at different locations within the rotor structure is assessed and the remaining life at each location is calculated. A sensitivity study is performed at half load, which shows an increase in lifetime of the rotor.