Abstract
Water droplet impingement erosion has been a severe problem of low pressure steam turbine blade materials in energy generation system. In order to estimate life of the blade materials, it is essential to investigate the impingement factors such as diameter, frequency and velocity of droplets in erosion testing methods. We investigated droplet impingement factors under various test conditions using water-jet testing apparatus, and compared the water-jet method with the cavitation testing method which was conducted in this paper. As a result, it was found that the water-jet testing apparatus is suitable for estimating the erosion damage, because of its uniform impingement conditions. And converting damage depth rate into volume loss, it was confirmed that erosion damage caused by water droplet impingement is related to the impact energy of the droplets at the high velocity region of water droplets. On the basis of the results, we proposed basic equations for prediction of material damage caused by water droplet impingement.
