As a General Electric Company Field Engineer, I installed many turbine rotors like this one. Usually I put them in a little slower.... I'm certainly glad these guys emptied their pockets before getting near the open casing.
You wouldn't happen to know the old guy who worked on the sl-7 ships awhile back? I worked with him on a couple of ships back in the early 2000's,he must have been in his early 70's back then...Nothing he didn't know about steam ships. Could be an ornery old bastard though.lol.didnt much care for black folks. cant remember his name only that he was a GE rep.
I know, I cringed sooo hard when I saw him do that. Imagine getting impaled by houndreds of compressorblades and then crushed by the whole shaft assembly.
I have worked around cranes for 36 years. Driven them about 12.I have never seen one fail that way.Generally people working beneath cranes seem to think they have nine lives.
Out of all the crane accidents I've seen in videos or read about, this is the first where a winch failed. It's usually a cable or some part of the actual rigging that fails. Either way somebody is out a chunk of money even if nobody gets hurt. Glad nobody was hurt in this one.
Yikes! The blade damage is dramatic, but really, the whole thing is junk now: all blades, disks, the shaft, the stators, the bearings. They're now back way farther than when they first started the overhaul. At colossal expense, for sure.
Lol Will, the stator is the name of the part that goes in between the turbine blade sections in order to prevent the gas from rotating as it flows through the turbine, and the bearings are clearly visible in this video…
"Psh... why order a fancy lift system for tens of thousands of dollars when I can get what's basically the exact same thing for only $599.99 at 'Harbor Freight.' I mean come on, no one will know the difference anyways!"
Yup - love to know more about this one. So sad, seeing finely constructed hardware destroyed by cheap shit castings in the crane. I'm guessing that was some sort of transmission shaft with busted off engagement dogs. It explains that mechanical scream just before it came ALL the way loose. No excuse for not using forged components in that drive train.
no body will go under load in any way...that guy was also doing the same to check installation...safety guys never allow to stand under even when one blade is being installed that was a whole set of Compressor and turbine with rotor...
"Uh, yeah... I just pissed myself... Over." "That's a big 10-4. So did I. Over." Christ those two guys down in the area close to where that turbine is mounted were very luck to have been able to clock themselves out that day!
I used to work for GE as a project specialist, One of the engineers gave me a copy of this 3 years ago.... This was in a plant in Germany... I remember this. thanks for posting it...
Worked on many a steam and gas turbine rotor swap as a millwright with no problems, that rotor would weigh less than the cover which was removed first, the crane would be rated to handle the cover weight, it appears the hoist coupling failed.
Yeah looked like they had it rigged right. Spreader beam and plenty big enough straps. I have been involved in many rigging evolutions and you can get complacent sometimes.i worked in the shipyard and sometimes because of space constraints you HAD to get under the load in order to land it. or refuse and lose your job.
+bonjourmssr Yes its salvageable but very expensive, and it will cost 1-2 years. The rotor is too damaged. 180 degree on the underside, and in the upper center from the traverse impact. Even the underside of the housing, wont look well. Mostly there will be replacement from another powerplant, which has gone offline. If there are more turbines of the same type in one plant, there is often a replacement rotor in stock.
This poor Crain Operator most likely received a lot of "Atta-Boy's" & pats on his back for the many good lifts in the past. But it only takes one "O-Shit" to wipe all them Atta-Boy's all out and lose your job.
I’ve done every part of this procedure many times, mostly as the crane operator, the notorious weak link of those crane’s were the load brake being not adjusted right, that one was having trouble holding the load, you can hear the motor over rev, this can cause multiple things to fail, usually the gearbox or coupling. They dropped the stator at my plant after I retired and killed a boy on the turbin deck.
Wow, thanks for the inside info with the load brake. I'm gonna say that you are spot on with your diagnosis. I'm assuming this isn't stateside so no OSHA report to read. Again, thanks. - Surry Virginia
Luckily, it seems that no people were injured in this accident. That's a very positive piece of information. Yes, the turbine is completely destroyed (since it cannot be balanced properly again, no matter how carefully it is repaired), but it's just a block of metal. A value of $6.5 million can be produced pretty quickly by a small team of people, but there is no monetary value that could compensate for human health or life.
+semmtexx thats a "fenner"coupling- used in the EU -fenner taperlocks adapt the coupling to the shaft--seen these in screening plants--when one looked like this on a plant, someone took a maul to it,because they forgot to loosen the 2 allen head screws around the taperlock to close the gap between the coupling halves.
Kousheng nuclear power plant in Taiwan has an old turbine rotor on display at their entrance, sitting out in the rain, of all places. I wonder just how long it took to decon that thing to free release it, considering it's a BWR plant, and the turbines run on primary steam. :-o
I saw a replacement gas turbine on its stands waiting to be put in at a Nuclear Power plant around ten years ago. It didn't look to be real heavy. Not over 50000 lbs. A crane like the one that failed must have gotten their parts cheap or it wouldn't have failed. I'm sure it was rated well over what ever it weighed. But then a worker removing the cover of the turbine being replaced was throwing/flipping a wrench in the air while standing on the cover. This was in PA so who knows.
+A.H. Shukry IMO, lack of daily inspections especially before heavy lifts like this---looks like the bearings at the input shaft of the gearbox failed, causing the shaft to load sideways under load, when the fenner coupling failed the input shaft broke thru the brake band asmby., causing the gearbox to freewheel, dumping the load, but thats my 25 cent review of this--mgt. saved a dollar, but they f%$#@ed themselves here!!!
janj0n whups!, ya let the bean counters do the talking, save a few bucks!, are you sure that part needs replaced?, this part is the new, and improved version!, it'll work much better.
Stress point- where forged hardened steel should have been used instead of cast on that particular component? I do not know, just saying. Thank you for the excellent video. It is definitely a learning experience for all, and I am glad no one was hurt.
i work on gas and steam turbines for a living and this is a gasser. you could say this is the quick way of setting the rotor.the rotor itself is around 15mil let alone the other damage to the turbine itself.
Nomeclature Issue: STEAM TURBINE is a device that extracts thermal energy from pressurized steam and uses it to do mechanical work on a rotating output shaft. GAS TURBINE, also called a combustion turbine, is a type of internal combustion engine. It has an upstream rotating compressor coupled to a downstream turbine, and a combustion chamber in-between.
Don't worry Jim....the maximum load rating is a guideline...these things can handle twice the recommended max...OH HOLY SHIT!!!! What do we do Jim? Jim??? JIM???? where are you running Jim????
That should serve as an explanation why you never ever stand under a suspended load. Like the guy to the left did shortly before it came crashing down. At least it looked like he was under it.
@Skyisnotalimit Yes the 1st stage buckets (that is what we call turbine blades) have a ceramic tbc coating.. the cost is more like $20 million plus i think. I repair and build these for a living,.
The crane operator must've been so relieved when it became clear that the failure occurred because of the actual crane breaking, rather than his negligence
Go pee in the cup... Seriously though, it sounds to me like the winch broke. you can hear gears screaming and stripping right before the earth-shattering KABOOM!
Thanks to God no one was hurt, there was one technician very near the incidnet. The Turbine rotor is badly damaged. It seems either the safe working load of the overhead crane was close to the turbine rotor weight or the overhead crane was not inspected and certified for such critical heavy lift for long time.
@leexr2i i use to do some welding on some of them ceramic coated blades. they would freak out when one got chipped, it was like $500 to fix the chip and if it had to be stripped and re done was almost $2000. i loved welding the impengment covers and vane inserts in them
+Jochum Bakker No way, this is not GE machine. It's not a Gas Turbine at all so Frame 9 shouldn't be mentioned in first place, it's a steam turbine and rarely this type of turbine is used in power plant because of its inefficiency.
Out-of-roundness of such turbine can be in-situ (on grinding machine) measured with RON-Pilot tester. Google for 'RON-Pilot roundness measurement' for additional info
Large ones like that are still unlikely to be be monocrystalline. Though it is likely a 3rd generation superalloy which is the next best thing. Titanium, Nickel, and a few dozen other metals are the typical components. Then coated with ceramic blends for corrosive resistance and pitting damage. Hopefully single crystal manufacturing becomes easier soon!
Viewed it again and you're correct. I was still thinking about the accident when I typed that. That fellow in the yellow hard hat doesn't know how lucky he is to be alive. What failed?
@RochesterGT It has several compressor stages, and quite a distance between where the compressor and turbine stages are; obviously where a combustor section fits. This my friend is a gas turbine used to generate electricity.
That turbine rotor had to weigh at least 50 tons. When that rotor fell everyone in the power plant must have felt the floor jump under them and heard the sound of the crash.
One of the blades of the turbine was bent in the mishap. A worker was able to take a ballpen hammer and tap out the metal. The turbine was up and running after only a minute and twenty-two seconds after occurrence.
@rogercardy That was the first hint that these guys weren't exactly Risk Averse. And as if the failing hoist and drop into the housing didn't cause enough damage, the hoist boom then had to crash on top of the upper vanes and damage them as well.
i use to work on turbine blade refurbishment for ge in the uk.. i now refurb full gas turbines! i have the same unit as they dropped here in the shop now... and some bigger 9FA's
we lift these with a 100t Clarke Chapman overhead crane.. its around 80years old and beautiful.. is so solid even when lifting a 78ton 9fa it dont bounce one bit... but getting parts is not possible, everything has to be made and its trouble maintaining her.. be getting new crane soon i think.