Experimental Crack Length Evaluation in a Gas Turbine Blade-Disc Connection Using Phased Array Ultrasonic Testing

Turbomachinery, specially gas turbines and axial compressors, play an important and vital role in energy producing and transmission industries. Thus, probable defects must be detected and measured in a timely manner, in order to prevent expensive costs of repair and maintenance. In this paper, a gas turbine blade-disc connection model, that is one of the most important and sensitive gas turbine parts, has been inspected using phased array ultrasonic non-destructive testing method. In manufactured mockup specimen, a crack with 4 and 8 millimeters length, has been created in two steps, followed by the length effect study on inspection results. Comparison of acquired signals in different angles for each crack length with acquired signals got from the healthy model in the same angles, has been employed for crack sizing purposes. The increase in the amplitude of crack reflected signals and the decrease in the amplitude of signals related to the wall behind the crack versus increase in the inspection angle, in ultrasonic phased array testing, has been utilized for extracting a novel feature for crack length estimation. Experimental results show that it is possible to evaluate the crack length in the complicated fir-tree geometry of the disc connection area to the blade, with the amount of error less than 10%, using the extracted feature.