Method and system for assessing life of cracked dovetail in turbine

A method for predicting a remaining operational life of a turbine component comprising:

• a. obtaining crack flaw data regarding a current crack flaw in the turbine component and an expected propagation rate for the crack flaw;
• b. applying a probalistic analysis to the crack flaw data and expected crack propagation rate to generate statistical distribution of the propagation of the crack flaw during a predetermined operating time period of the component;
• c. using the statistical distribution of the propagated crack flaw and data regarding a structure of the turbine component to determine a load applied to the turbine component during the predetermined operating time period of the component;
• d. determining whether the turbine component at the end of the predetermined operating time period has reached a crack failure criteria based on the statistical distribution of the propagated crack flaw and the determined load, and
• e. generating an indicator of a predicted remaining life of the component, wherein the indicator is understandable by a user.

A system for predicting a remaining operational life of a turbine component comprising:

• an inspection device that collects crack flaw data regarding current crack flaws in the turbine component;
• a computer system including a processor and a data storage device, wherein the data storage device stores the crack flaw data and data regarding the structure and operation of the turbine component and a software tool comprising algorithms for analyzing the software component and predicting a remaining life of the component;
• wherein the algorithms include a probalistic analytical tool receiving as inputs the crack flaw data and outputting a statistical distribution of crack data, and
• using the statistical distribution of crack flaw data and the data regarding the structure and operation of the turbine component to determine statistical distributions of force loads applied to the turbine component and statistical distributions of crack propagation resulting from the force loads, wherein the determination of force loads and crack propagation is performed iteratively to predict a time to failure of the component, and
• outputting to a user an indicator of the predicted time to failure.