Governing of industrial steam turbines is realised by a set of two or more valves, which control the amount of steam entering the turbine. Forces caused by pressure fluctuations, turbulence etc. are acting on the throttling valve and lead to spindle vibrations mainly during part-load operation. Beside this mechanism, it is assumed that there is an interaction between the control valves, which generates another source of vibration.This paper presents the design of a new test rig with two parallel control valves. The chosen scaling method, which includes material selection for the valve spindle and ensures comparability and transferability of the vibrational behaviour to the full scale, is the focus of the design. Emphasis is placed on measurement equipment to obtain information on fluid-structure interactions.Results show that the reasons for valve vibrations can be located both upstream and downstream of the valve seat. Forces caused by pressure fluctuations within and downstream the valve opening lead to similar oscillations at both valves. Furthermore, the upstream valve causes disturbances leading to abnormal behaviour of the second valve.Measurements results of fast valve lift adjustment over the entire operating range are compared to static valve configurations. Differences within measurement accuracy were obtained.

A Novel Test Rig for Investigation of Vibration and Interaction of Two Steam Turbine Control Valves

Paper Proceedings: https://asmedigitalcollection.asme.org/GT/GT2021/volume/84898

Turbo Expo 2021

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