E.

Poursaeidi
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
University of Zanjan,
Zanjan 45371-38791, Iran
e-mail: epsaeidi@znu.ac.ir
Partial Stall Effects on the
M. R. Mohammadi Arhani
Department of Mechanical Engineering,
Failure of an Axial Compressor
University of Zanjan,
Zanjan 45371-38791, Iran
Blade
e-mail: mohammadi500@gmail.com
This paper is aimed to show the effects of partial stall on the fracture of the first stage
S. Hosseini rotating blades of the gas turbine compressors of an onshore gas refinery. The first part
Faculty of Mechanical Engineering, of the paper deals with the results of finite element modeling (FEM) of stress distribution
Tarbiat Modares University, and stress concentration areas on the blades under its first to third natural frequencies.
Tehran 14115-111, Iran Comparison of the stress concentration areas with the fractured blades shows that the
e-mail: hosseini.sana@gmail.com blades have been fractured due to resonance under the first and second natural frequen-
cies. The second part of the paper deals with the computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
M. Darayi simulation of air flowing through the blades to determine the most probable sources of
Department of Mechanical Engineering, vibrational loads as the aerodynamic forces. Results of CFD simulations show that the
Arak University, operation of the gas turbines under 40–50% of their nominal output power—which has
Arak 39455-38138, Markazi, Iran been very regular in the history of operation of the turbines—increases the possibility of
e-mail: mech.mohsen@gmail.com stall at the tip side of the first stages rotating blades. The vortices shedding due to down-
wash flow at the tip side of the blades causes flow instability and increases the aerody-
M. Arablu namic vibrational forces on the blades, which finally makes them to experience a kind of
Department of Mechanical Engineering and
high cycle fatigue (HCF). [DOI: 10.1115/1.4030515]
Engineering Science,
Keywords: blade failure, vibrational analysis, CFD, axial compressor stall
University of North Carolina at Charlotte,
Charlotte, NC 28223
e-mail: marablu@uncc.edu

1 Introduction condition. Therefore, this study is dedicated to determine the

vibrational characteristics of the blades and to find the most prob-
Failure of a compressor/turbine blade during the normal opera-
able source of vibrations in them. In this respect, the commercial
tion of engine is the worst and most dangerous accident which
FEM software packages of ANSYS and ALGHOR are used to simulate a
happens for gas turbines occasionally even though careful inspec-
3D model of the fractured blades to determine the vibrational
tions are scheduled. Due to importance of this subject, there has
characteristics of the blades and also CFX software is used to simu-
been a great deal of efforts dedicated to investigate the root cause
late the air flowing through the blades to determine the aerody-
of turbines blades failures in the past two decades. In the case of
namic forces as the vibration forces acting on the blades. On one
compressor blade fracture, the typical factors can be categorized
hand, the results of FEM analyses show that stress concentration
as corrosion, erosion, foreign object damage, fatigue, etc., [1–7].
areas under the first and second natural frequency modes of the
The most typical mechanism of blade fracture is that a defect
blades are exactly located at the crack origin location which
forms due to corrosion (corrosion pit), and a crack is initiated and
implies the occurrence of resonance in the blades. On the other
propagated from the defect under HCF [2,7]. Cowles investiga-
hand, CFD simulation results show the occurrence of partial stall
tions results [8] reveal that there are several different sources of
due to increase of downwash flow at the tip of the rotating blades
HCF damage in turbine engines like aerodynamic excitation,
because of operation of the gas turbine lower than 80% of its nom-
mechanical vibration, airfoil flutter, and acoustic fatigue.
inal operation load, which has been very regular at the history of
An onshore gas refinery in Iran has faced four disastrous fail-
operations of the engines under study. The increase of downwash
ures of compressor blades with in a span of 3 yr [2,9,10]. All these
flow increases the fluctuations of air flow and also the frequencies
failures are of same nature that is HCF. Numerous reports of simi-
of the pulsation of aerodynamic forces acting on the blades.
lar failures show a design problem in these gas turbines [11,12].
Regarding the reports, the premature fracture failure of one of the
blades in the compressors and collision of the detached blade with
other blades has destroyed all the blades throughout the compres-
sors. Each of these failures has caused the destruction of 17 rows 2 History of the Failures
of blading consisting of 1700 static blades and 916 rotating Regarding the reports of one of Iran’s south coast side refin-
blades, and 60 inlet guide vanes (IGVs) which costs $10 to eries, there has been four similar fracture failures in frame-type
$20 106 depending on the severity of the damages. gas turbine compressors blades which all have destroyed all the
Previous fractography investigations on the fractured blades blades of compressors. In all these cases, the engine has been
have shown that the blades have been fractured under HCF working under part load condition, which suddenly the vibration
amplitude has soared and the fracture has happened accompanied
with a loud voice. The average of the operating load of the
Contributed by the Structures and Dynamics Committee of ASME for publication
in the JOURNAL OF ENGINEERING FOR GAS TURBINES AND POWER. Manuscript received
engines has been 37–63% of the engine nominal operation load.
December 28, 2014; final manuscript received April 27, 2015; published online June Visual investigation of the failed compressors shows similar frac-
2, 2015. Editor: David Wisler. ture conditions so that in all of them fracture of one of the first

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C 2015 by ASME
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 row rotating blades and collision of the detached part has
destroyed all the blades and IGVs as shown in Fig. 1.
Due to existence of active and reactive forces between the rotat-
ing blades and the air, the detached part returns toward the inlet of
the compressor in advance, which collides the IGVs and then
returns toward the outlet of the compressor and destroys them.
This incident happens very fast so that before the trip of the
engine it destroys majority of the compressor blades. Regarding
the visual investigations, it was revealed that in three of the frac-
tured blades (for engines called gas turbine generator (GTG) A, B,
and C), the fracture has been on the platform section of the blade,
and in one of them (GTG D engine) the fracture has been 62 mm
above the platform. Also, there has been another crack in the first
stage rotors which has been detected during overhaul by dye pene-
trant inspector.
3 Finite Element Analyses
The first row of the compressor comprises the cascade of 64
IGVs, 32 rotator blades, and 60 stator blades. The constructed 3D
model of the blades is shown in Fig. 2.
Finite element analysis is performed to analyze static and
dynamic stresses affecting the rotor blades using commercial
ANSYS and ALGOR softwares. Due to the structural characteristics
and working conditions of the rotor blades, they are under static
and dynamic loadings in which making them to vibrate; thus, two
different methods of static and dynamic analyses are employed as
described in the following paragraphs, respectively.
Fig. 1 Destroyed compressor
Fig. 2 3D model of IGVs and first row rotor blades and stator
blades
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3.1 Static Analysis of the Blade. In this part, static analysis
was performed in ALGOR software by applying boundary condi-
tions such as rotational velocity and static pressure equal to
5163 rpm and 20,767 Pa, respectively. Also fixed support condi-
tion was applied as the boundary condition on the lateral surface
of the blade root. The generated FE model consists of 57,079
brike elements, which were defined in a Cartesian coordinate sys-
tem. Result of the analysis in the form of stress distribution is
shown in Fig. 3. The highest value of stress at the center of this
area is 225.2 MPa and 65 mm above the platform in which there is
just a little difference in comparison with the average height of
the fracture line of the blade of the GTG D compressor.
Herein, the modal analysis for a few basic modes performed in
order to a general evaluation of the vibration behavior of the blade
in which Fig. 4 shows a graphical view of results of analysis with
respect to stress distribution. According to Fig. 4, a high stress
area in one-third height of the blade occurs in the first bending
mode at frequency of 323.6 Hz. This area conforms greatly with
the height of crack nucleation of broken blade of engine GTG D.
Also, the stress distribution on the blade under the second natural
mode of vibration at the frequency of 944.5 Hz shows a point of
maximum stress concentration in the leading edge which precisely
matches with broken blade of engine GTG C.
3.2 Blade Frequency Response Analysis. This method is
based on vibrational analysis of the blade under the existence of
damping coefficient. In this method, frequency response of blade
to different loadings is evaluated by determining an appropriate
frequency interval. In this method, all kinds of loadings should be
considered as vibrational (dynamic) because there is no possibility
of studying both static loads (such as centrifugal force) and
dynamic loads (such as aerodynamic forces) simultaneously [13].
The boundary conditions were fixed to be no displacement support
condition at the root, pressure of 20767.4 MPa on the pressure sur-
face, and differences between maximum and minimum torsion
momentum equivalent to 12.17 N m resulted from CFD simula-
tion of fluid flow upon the blade airfoil. Also with respect to cal-
culations utilizing half power band width method, the blade
damping coefficient for the first and the second mode is consid-
ered 0.0063 and 0.0034, respectively [9].
Using frequencies obtained from modal analysis in Sec. 3.1,
stress analysis was conducted in this section in which Fig. 5 shows
the stress distribution contours under the second natural frequency
of 944.5 Hz. The main reason for choosing the blade’s second
Fig. 3 Stress distribution on the pressure surface of the blade
which represents a stressful area at approximately its one-third
height
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 Fig. 4 Qualitative stress distribution on the blade under first three natural frequency vibrations
natural vibration mode is that regarding Sec. 3.1, the stress distri-
bution under the second vibration mode creates a stress concentra-
tion at the platform section that exactly matches the crack
initiation areas in three of the fractures. As it is shown in Fig. 5, in
frequency response analysis, the dynamic stress distribution
appropriately conforms to GTG C blade broken section.
Fig. 5 Comparison of stress distribution on the blades
resulted from vibration analysis under frequency equal to sec-
ond natural frequency with the fracture line of GTG C compres-
sor blade
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4 CFD Analysis
Comparison of the results of static and dynamic analysis of the
blades under the regular operation conditions of the engine with
the fracture sections showed that the blades are vulnerable to
stress concentrations in the fractured zones resulting from the
vibrations under their first and second natural frequencies. But it
should be mentioned that there will be no vibration if there is no
exciting loads on the blades. Unfortunately, the blades are always
interacting with the aerodynamic forces in which an unstable flow
condition can lead them to vibrate and if the acting forces be har-
monious with the mentioned frequencies then the blades fall into
resonance. The resonance of the blades fractures them under
HCF. Thus to study the aerodynamic forces on the blades, the air
flow through the first stage of the blades is simulated by CFD
codes. In this respect, the operation characteristics of the compres-
sor under two different controlling modes of the system so-called
IGV temperature controlling ON and OFF (IGV temp ctrl ON,
IGV temp ctrl OFF) are first studied. Figure 6 shows the compres-
sor discharge pressure versus the generators output power for IGV
temp ctrl ON and OFF conditions.
Figure 6 is very useful because majority of operation character-
istics of the compressor depend on its controlling mode and its
output pressure. For instance, the air flow pressure, temperature,
and mass flow rate at the outlet of each stage of the compressor
can be calculated using the graphs shown in Fig. 6. Also the posi-
tioning angle of the IGVs depends on the controlling mode and
output pressure of the compressor. These characteristics are very
important and useful in the CFD simulations. The IGV temp ctrl
ON mode is delineated by the round dot line and the IGV temp
ctrl OFF by the solid line in Fig. 6. As shown in Fig. 6, the two
lines intercept at the output power of about 32 MW (about 80% of
the nominal operation load of the engine), and there is only one
operation mode afterwards. It seems that the compressor gets
more stable aerodynamically when it works at 80–100% of its
nominal operation load.
Regarding the graph which is showing the IGV temp ctrl ON
mode in Fig. 6, the compressor output pressure is approximately
6.87 bar for the operation loads of 10.6–16.2 MW and it increases
DECEMBER 2015, Vol. 137 / 122602-3
 Fig. 6 (a) Compressor operation curve under different controlling modes and the failure conditions and (b) output
power versus exhaust mass flow rate, based on nominal engine operation [14]

Fig. 7 The constructed geometry and the applied mesh in the CFX modules

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 just about 0.73 bar by the operation load of about 24 MW;
because, IGV temp ctrl ON mode makes a limit of 57 deg for the
IGVs positioning angle in this operation load interval. In other
words, with the increase of the engine output power, the mass
flow rate of the compressor should be increased but since the
IGVs positioning angle does not change, the applied energy from
the compressor on the air is converted to enthalpy. Under these
circumstances, the compressor works under an unstable condition
which makes the flow to be susceptible to separation in the suction
side of the blades. As the history of fractures shows, the operation
of the engine under both IGV temp ctrl ON and OFF models with
the output power of 10–25 MW is really dangerous for the com-
pressor because it has caused the fracture of blades in four differ-
ent engines so far. Herein, the results of CFD simulations for the
output power of 23.8 MW, which is exactly identical to the opera-
tion condition of GTG C engine during its fracture, is presented.
First, the BLADE MODELLER of ANSYS workbench was used
to construct the desired geometry for simulation in ANSYS CFX soft-
ware by the angle-thickness model. Then the geometry is trans-
ported into ANSYS TURBOGRID for constructing the meshes.
The constructed geometry and the applied meshes are shown in
Fig. 7. After constructing the meshes, the boundary conditions
and other parameters of the simulations are applied in CFX-Pre
module. After applying the turbulence model, spinning velocity of
the rotating blades, the static pressure at the outlet boundary and
mass flow rate at the inlet boundary in the CFX-Pre module, the
convergence criteria, and the values are fixed in the CFX-Solver
and the solution is started. After the solution is converged, the
desired parameter and results are investigated in CFX-Post mod-
ule. To increase the accuracy of the simulation results, the model
was primarily simulated by steady state (stage model), and then
the results of this simulation were used to fix the boundary condi-
tions in steady state (Frozen rotor model).
The streamlines at the tip section of the blades resulted from
stage model from two different viewpoint are shown in Figs. 8(a)
and 8(b). Regarding the streamlines shown in these figures, the
positioning angle of 57 deg for the IGVs under the simulated con-
dition is less than the optimum angle so that the attack angle of
the flow over rotating blade is not properly fixed; this condition
makes the flow to be unstable and also increases the possibility of
Fig. 8 Streamline over the tip section of the blades resulted
from stage model
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separation in the suction side of the rotating blades. As shown in
these figures, the improper attack angle in flow over the rotating
blades has made a vortex in the stream downwash flow over the tip
side of the blades. Since the flow along all the stages of axial com-
pressors depends on the upstream flow condition, a little vortex in the
prior stages of the compressor can potentially make stall conditions in
the downstream flow which is very dangerous for the system.
Streamlines over the tip section of the blades results from Fro-
zen rotor model simulations under two different viewpoints are
shown in Fig. 9. As it is shown in this figure, the flow is separated
on the suction side of the IGVs near their leading edge. The sepa-
ration has caused a little vortex in this area but the pressure of the
adjacent fluid flow dampens the vortex and prevents its propaga-
tion through the downstream flow. On the other hand, as a result
of this little vortex on the suction side of the IGVs, a huge radial
vortex is created at the tip section of the rotating blades which is
clearly shown in velocity vectors presented in Fig. 10.
Regarding Fig. 9, the vortex at the suction side of the IGVs and
the huge radial vortex at the tip section of the rotating blades are
occurring simultaneously. From the practical viewpoint, these
phenomena can lead to rotating stall phenomenon at the rotating
blades of the compressor, which is very dangerous from the view-
point of exerted vibrations on the blades. Results of investigations
of NASA Glenn Research Center show that the rotating stall phe-
nomenon is directly proportional to the stream downwash flow at
the tip section of the blades [15].
As shown in Fig. 10, downwash flow over the tip section of the
rotating blades has developed in the radial direction until the mid-
dle section of the blade, which showing the high momentum and
inertia of this flow in comparison with axial flow. This huge vor-
tex at the tip section of the rotating blades has caused two local
stalls at the tip and hub sections of the downside stator blades.
Regarding the research results published by NASA Glenn
Research Center [15], rotating stall occurs near stall condition of
the compressor and vibrates the blades and makes them to reso-
nate. According to aforementioned results, it can be concluded
that the GTG C compressors have been commissioning near stall
condition, which has made its rotating blades to resonate under
second natural vibration mode. Thus, it can be concluded that the
Fig. 9 Streamline over the tip section of the blades resulted
from frozen rotor model
DECEMBER 2015, Vol. 137 / 122602-5

Fig. 10 Huge radial vortex at the tip section of the rotating
blades causing local stalls at the downstream flow at the tip
and hub sections of the stator blades
aerodynamic vibrations have been the main source of the vibra-
tional forces leading to HCF of the blades.
5 Conclusions
There have been four premature fracture failures in the first row
rotating blades of an onshore gas refinery in Iran. Regarding the
visual investigations, in three of the fractured blades (engines
called GTG A, B, and C), the fracture has been on the platform
section of the blade, and in one of them (GTG D engine) the frac-
ture has been 62 mm above the platform. In this paper, effects of
partial stall on these fractures were investigated using FE analysis
and CFD simulations.
• Modal analysis of the rotating blades revealed that the stress
concentration area at the middle section of the blade under its
first natural vibration mode exactly denotes the fracture section
of the GTG D compressor blade. Also, stress distribution at the
blade feather under its second natural vibration mode showed
a local stress concentration area, which is exactly located at
the fracture section of GTG C blade. Furthermore, results of
vibrational analysis confirmed the stress concentration area at
the second natural frequency of 944.5 Hz, which is exactly
located at the fracture section of GTG C compressor blade.
• CFD simulations of the flow through the IGVs and first stage
rotor and stator blades under GTG C compressor operation
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condition were conducted using both stage model and Frozen
rotor model of CFX software. Results of simulations showed
that there is a huge vortex at the tip section of the rotor blades
resulting from IGVs improper positioning angle under the
engine’s controlling system of IGV temp ctrl ON. Regarding
the occurrence of this vortex, it was concluded that aerody-
namic forces have been the main source of the vibrations in
the fractured blades.
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Transactions of the ASME