General Electric Company

Gary Edward Yehle

Noel Jacob Bylina

Wayne Alan Lillibridge

Thomas Joseph Farineau

Michael Earl Montgomery

Bruce William Brisson

Edward Arthur Dewhurst

Dennis Roger Ahl

Joseph Mark Serafini

Yavuz Kadioglu

Mark Steven Pape

Kieman Francis Ryan

A bucket to wheel dovetail attachment includes axially spaced radially extending wheel fingers having discrete sections of decreased axial thickness in a radial outward direction with transition fillets between sections of different thicknesses. The wheel fingers define wheel finger slots for receiving correspondingly shaped bucket dovetail fingers. Pins interconnect the buckets and rotor wheel. The slot bottoms likewise have fillets. The fillets on the wheel fingers and slot bottoms have a blend of different radii with the larger radii outward of the smaller radii to reduce stress concentrations and to avoid stress corrosion cracking in steam turbine applications.

Finger dovetail attachment between a turbine rotor wheel and bucket for stress reduction

A turbine bucket dovetail secures buckets in a turbine rotor. The turbine bucket dovetail includes a plurality of hooks engageable with a wheel post of the turbine rotor, which hooks extend in an axial direction relative to the turbine rotor. A pocket is machined in a tangential face of the dovetail, resulting in reduced peak stress in the wheel post dovetail edge at the gate opening.

Bucket dovetail design for turbine rotors

A dovetail joint between a rotor wheel and a bucket includes a male dovetail component on the rotor wheel and a female dovetail component on the bucket. The male dovetail component has axially projecting hooks with slanted surfaces along generally radially inwardly directed surfaces. The slanted surfaces form included angles with a plane normal to the axis of rotation and bisecting the wheel dovetail which are larger than 90&deg; and remain constant for all of the hooks. Single radius fillets are also provided along the transition surfaces between the slanted crush surfaces and the neck surfaces. The stress concentrations are therefore minimized.

Bucket and wheel dovetail design for turbine rotors

A locating plate for locating a first piece of rotary machinery relative to a second piece of rotary machinery is provided. The plate has a first periphery surface for mating with a first receiving surface of the first piece of rotary machinery and a second periphery surface for mating with a second receiving surface of the second piece of rotary machinery. The plate also has at least one attaching device for use in attaching the plate to the first piece of rotary machinery and at least one removal device for use in removing the plate from the first piece of rotary machinery. The plate is removably attachable to the second piece of rotary machinery, and the second periphery surface is sizable independently from the first periphery surface.

Rabbet plate for coupling rotors

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Clifton Park, NY, United States of America

Gary Edward Yehle