Fatigue Life Prediction Modeling for Turbine Hot Section Materials

This paper presents a summary of the life prediction methods developed under the NASA Lewis Research Center’s Hot Section Technology (HOST) program. A major objective of the fatigue and fracture efforts under the HOST program was to significantly improve the analytic life prediction tools used by the aeronautical gas turbine engine industry. This has been achieved in the areas of high-temperature thermal and mechanical fatigue of bare and coated high-temperature superalloys. Such technical improvements will eventually reduce life cycle costs. The cyclic crack initiation and propagation resistance of nominally isotropic polycrystalline alloys and highly anisotropic single crystal alloys have been addressed. A sizeable data base has been generated for three alloys [cast PWA 1455 (B–1900 + Hf), wrought Inconel 718, and cast single-crystal PWA 1480] in bare and coated conditions. Two coating systems, diffusion aluminide (PWA 273) and plasma-sprayed MCrAlY overlay (PWA 286), were employed. Life prediction modeling efforts were devoted to creep-fatigue interaction, oxidation, coatings interactions, multiaxially of stress-strain states, mean stress effects, cumulative damage, and thermomechanical fatigue. The fatigue crack initiation life models developed to date include the Cyclic Damage Accumulation (CDA) Model of Pratt & Whitney and the Total Strain Version of Strainrange Partitioning (TS-SRP) of NASA Lewis for nominally isotropic materials, and the Tensile Hysteretic Energy Model of Pratt & Whitney for anisotropic superalloys. The fatigue model being developed by the General Electric Company is based upon the concepts of Path-Independent Integrals (PII) for describing cyclic crack growth under complex non-linear response at the crack tip due to thermomechanical loading conditions. A micromechanistic oxidation crack extension model has been derived by researchers at Syracuse University. The models are described and discussed in the paper. Only limited verification has been achieved to date as several of the technical programs are still in progress and the verification tasks are scheduled, quite naturally, near the conclusion of the program. To date, efforts have concentrated on developement of independent models for cyclic constitutive behavior, cyclic crack initiation, and cyclic crack propagation. The transition between crack initiation and crack propagation has not been thoroughly researched as yet, and the integration of these models into a unified life prediction method has not been addressed.