Abstract
When Ti-6Al-4V is used in long steam turbine blades, the main issues are how to improve the fatigue strength as a problem of internal quality and how to forge the thinnest possible blades as problem of dimensional precision. To assure an excellent fatigue strength, it is important to make the two phase fine and equiaxial structure by providing enough plastic deformation in the two phase$(\alpha\;phase/\beta\;phase)$ temperature region. Accordingly, it needs to predict that forging temperature, preform design and forging velocity in forging process. To achieve this end, the two steps forging process was suggested to forge the thin and twisted blades with a precision hammer considering die forces and metal flow. Two steps forging process consists of the flattening forging process and finishing forging process. Process in forging of a 1016mm long steam turbine blade is designed by the finite element method. This study attempts to derive systematic design procedures for process design in the forging. Forging parameters was analyzed in two-dimensional plane-strain simulation and two steps forging process carried out in three-dimensional simulation. Consequently, optimal forging process parameters of long steam turbine blades in Ti-6Al-4V with a high dimensional precision are selected in the hammer die forging.
