Torque-tuned, integrally-covered bucket and related method
AssigneeGeneral Electric Company
InventorsDavid Alan Caruso, Joseph Mark Serafini
Life of this patent
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Abstract
A turbine bucket includes a shank portion, an adjacent and radially inner dovetail mounting portion, an adjacent and radial outer airfoil portion, with a platform at a radially inner end of said airfoil portion adjacent the shank portion, and an integral cover at a radially outer tip of the airfoil portion, wherein the shank portion is shaped to provide a torque zone establishing a desired torque characteristic for the bucket to create, upon insertion into a dovetail groove on a turbine wheel, a desired contact pressure between the integral cover and adjacent covers in a row of similar buckets.
Claims11
A method of disassociating torque characteristics of an airfoil portion of a turbine bucket from contact pressure at coupling faces of adjacent integral bucket tip covers comprising:
- (a) forming a reduced cross-sectional area torque zone in a solid shank portion of each bucket, located radially between a bucket dovetail mounting portion and a bucket platform adjacent the airfoil portion wherein said torque zone has a cross-sectional area smaller than said platform and said dovetail mounting portion on opposite sides of said torque zone;
- and
- (b) during assembly of a plurality of said turbine buckets on a rotor wheel, applying torque only in said torque zone to achieve a predetermined contact pressure at the coupling faces of the tip covers.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.