Multiaxial high-cycle fatigue criteria and life prediction: Application to gas turbine blade

• Evaluation of a failed gas turbine blade using selected multiaxial fatigue models.
• The Dang-Van criterion gives the most conservative life predictions.
• The transient loads and number of starts reduce the operating lifetime.
• The blade’s regions of high probability of crack initiation are identified.

A recent work conducted by the authors (Maktouf and Saï, 2015) demonstrated that the root cause of the premature blade failure was caused by high-cycle fatigue (HCF) mechanism initiated at a localized carbon-rich area inducing grain boundary brittleness. The blade was subject to multiaxial cyclic loadings during its service life and any attempt to assess component fatigue strength leads to the question of choosing an appropriate fatigue design criterion. In this paper several multiaxial fatigue models are applied as post-processing step of the Finite Element Analysis (FEA) output results and the estimated fatigue lifetimes were assessed under different loading conditions. The material fatigue parameters, required as an input to the selected fatigue models were determined through a series of bending and torsion tests on specimens made of aged Inconel 718. A numerical post-processing algorithm was developed for Fatemi-Socie fatigue criterion and included as additional post-computation model in the used computer aided fatigue damage evaluation tool. The authors point out that the majority of the multiaxial fatigue studies available in the literature are conducted mainly for correlating the experimental laboratory results on specimens while they have been used in the frame of this study to investigate their application to an industrial case.