Root-cause analysis of burner tip failures in coal-fired power plants

Warpage and complete or partial tear of burner material was frequently experienced in coal-fired power plants due to material overheating. Root-cause analysis of a burner tip failure is investigated employing stress modeling in the burner tip material in this study. The analyses performed in this research paper include heat transfer and stress analyses employing computational tools. Thermal analysis was performed using Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) software FLUENT for computing temperature distribution within the burner tip due to convection and radiation. Once the temperature distribution in the burner tip is determined, Finite Element Analysis (FEA) is employed using ANSYS to determine the maximum stress and deformations in burner tip material. Both FLUENT and ANSYS are numerical commercial simulation tools employed in this study. Large temperature gradients along the burner tip result in local bending stresses. These stresses resulting in creep stresses might be causing warpage in the burner tip. In this study, a design option was exercised to eliminate the excessive stress gradient in the burner tip material. Seven different FEA models were developed to simulate different operating conditions. Proposed design modification (Model 5) was able to reduce the maximum compressive stress from 76.09 MPa to 33.59 MPa. Significant reduction in the thermal stress due to design modification in Model 5 made author believe that the proposed design solution would eliminate the burner tip failures in this particular power plant.