A high strength steam turbine rotor with a low susceptibility to stress corrosion cracking and it's methods of fabricating

摘要

A heat treatment process is provided that produces a monoblock, low alloy steel rotor for use in low pressure steam turbines. The process includes austenitizing the rotor at a substantially uniformly applied treatment temperature of about 840 DEG C, quenching the rotor, and then differentially tempering the rotor at different axial locations. The rotor is tempered in a furnace divided into regions by refractory boards enabling different temperatures in each divided region to be maintained. A higher than normal strength condition is achieved in one or more axial locations along the rotor by subjecting the location(s) to a lower tempering temperature. The axial location(s) being tempered at lower temperature approximate those locations less susceptible to stress corrosion cracking whereby increased strength is provided the rotor without increasing net susceptibility to stress corrosion cracking.