Abstract
New low pressure stages for 50 and 60 Hz steam turbines have been developed jointly by General Electric Company and TOSHIBA Corporation. The new low pressure stages feature 40" and 48" steel last stage blades for 60 Hz and 50 Hz applications, respectively. Last stage blades have been developed concurrently with the upstream stages, creating optimized low pressure turbine sections. This design has been further verified via a three stage scaled rig test of the 48/40 inch L-0,L-1 and L-2 stages. This model Turbine test measured both overall stage efficiency and detailed three-dimensional flow profiles through aerodynamic traverse and rake measurements. The measured stage efficiencies of the current design were clearly higher than the conventional design stages.
