Asymmetrical Underplatform Dampers in Gas Turbine Bladings: Theory and Application

Abstract

During operation, the rotating blades of a gas turbine are subjected to centrifugal forces as well as fluctuating gas forces, resulting in blade vibrations. In addition to material damping, aerodynamical and blade root damping, underplatform dampers are widely used to increase the amount of damping and to decrease blade vibration amplitudes. The friction forces generated by the relative displacements between the underplatform damper and the blade platforms provide a significant amount of energy dissipation. In practice, a number of different underplatform damper designs are applied. Basically, these are wedge dampers with flat contact areas, cylindrical dampers with curved surfaces or asymmetrical dampers with both flat contact surfaces on one side and curved contact surfaces on the other. The latter damper type combines the advantages of both the wedge and the cylindrical damper by preventing the damper from pure rolling on the one hand as it has been observed for cylindrical dampers and on the other hand, avoiding a diverged plane area contact in case of a wedge damper, causing a damper lift-off. This paper will focus on the investigation of cylindrical and asymmetrical underplatform dampers. A comparison between measurements of rotating assemblies in Siemens PG gas turbines (V84.2, V64.3A and V94.3A(2)) under test and real operating conditions with cylindrical and asymmetrical underplatform dampers and the predictions of the developed theoretical model are presented. Special attention is paid to the frequency shift due to the application of an underplatform damper, since in particular for stationary gas turbines, in addition to the amplitude reduction, the accurate prediction of the resonance frequency is of major interest.