Experimental Study on Water Erosion Resistance Characteristics to Steam Turbine Blade Material

An experimental system to assess the water erosion resistance of the steam turbine blade material was built. It can conduct the test of the blade material water erosion resistance characteristic with different water jet diameter and different impact velocity. The experimental investigation of the water erosion resistance characteristics of the blade materials with different surface treatment processes are carried out. By weighing the specimens of each stage, the curves of mass loss with time are obtained. The 2D metal micrograph, 3D surface topography and cross section pit curves are achieved with a laser 3D microscopy. The results reveal the characteristics of the specimens at all stages during the experiment. A method was proposed that the water erosion resistance characteristic can be evaluated by the volume loss based on the pit cross section size, which solves the problem that it's difficult to compare the masses with different material densities or coating densities. The experimental study in this paper has great value for the turbine blade material selection in the steam stages and surface protection technology.