Uncovering the Origin: inherent inclusion-related fracture of commercial gas turbine HPT blade retainers

The presentation will show the metallurgical evaluation of the 2 fractured field events, a shop finding, and several other cracked retainers that were detected following implementation of a field analytic. The presentation will cover the metallurgical evaluation, the characterization of the origin area that included inherent Oxide/Carbonitride/Nitride/Carbide (OCNCs) inclusions, the fracture mode, and will discuss the loading and testing/data that was examined to arrive to root cause.