1
Steam Turbine-Generator Torsional Response
due to Interaction with the Electrical Grid
Hans D. Giesecke, MPR Associates, Inc.
Abstract--The rotating part of a large steam turbine-
generator is typically composed of individual turbine rotors
that support the turbine blades or a generator rotor that
holds the generator windings. These individual parts are
usually attached together by bolted couplings. Although
this combined rotating part of the turbine-generator can be
excited in torsion by oscillating torques applied to its
various components, most of the torques that can damage
the large steam turbine-driven machines that provide power
to the grid is due to interaction with the electrical grid.
Due to the increasing size of these turbine-generators,
they can have between 20 to 30 torsional modes of
vibration with frequencies in the range where they can be
excited by the grid during normal operation. Since
damping for torsional modes can be very low (in the order
of 0.1 per cent of critical damping or less), vibratory
response at resonance can exceed 500 times the response
that would occur from an equivalent static load of the same
magnitude. As a result, turbine-generators can be quite
sensitive to torsional vibration stimulus from the electrical
grid and they should not be allowed to be operated at near-
resonance conditions. In addition the steam turbine-
generator must be capable of sustaining suddenly applied
impulse torques that can be generated by electrical grid
faults, mal-synchronization, turbine or generator trips, and
switching of transmission lines.
One way that torsional resonance can occur is if the
turbine generator is allowed to operate with unbalanced
load on the generator terminals while it has a torsional
mode with a frequency close to twice the grid frequency.
The unbalanced load can result in a steady oscillating
negative sequence current torque at twice the grid
frequency that can cause significant damage to the turbine-
generator if it has an excitable torsional mode with a
frequency too close to that of the exciting torque. It is
important to design the turbine generator to provide
sufficient torsional frequency margin with respect to such
steady oscillating torques at twice the grid frequency while
also providing a sufficiently rugged design that can
withstand the suddenly applied torques that occur due to
transients, upsets, and faults that occur from time-to-time
during operation.
Index Terms— Finite element methods, Generators,
Harmonic analysis, Power grids, Power system transients,
Surges, Torsion, Turbines, Vibrations.
978-1-4673-2729-9/12/$31.00 ©2012 IEEE
I. INTRODUCTION
T URBINE-generators that provide power to the electrical
grid can be sensitive to the various torques that the grid
can impose on them during normal operation. For example,
the turbine-generator must be capable of operating with
specific steady-state oscillating torques such as those
generated by its interaction with the natural frequencies of
some electrical grids (for example, sub-synchronous
resonance), or due to negative sequence current torques that
are generated at twice the grid frequency as a result of
unbalanced load on the generator terminals. In addition,
sudden transient torques often imposed on turbine-generators
from upsets or transients such as synchronization, line
switching, turbine or generator trips, and electrical grid faults
can result in impulse loads that excite all the torsional modes.
These sudden impulse loads that occur from rapidly applied
torques must also be sustainable by the design.
The torsional response of a turbine-generator can be
significant if operating near resonance because torsional
modes generally have very low damping. In some cases, the
damping may even decrease more due to aero-elastic
amplification of some torsional modes when there is sufficient
amplitude of vibration to generate the required feedback. As a
result, it is critical that turbine-generators be designed to avoid
resonance by ensuring they don’t have any excitable torsional
modes with natural frequencies that are close to the frequency
of the significant exciting torques.
This paper discusses the torsional characteristics of a
typical turbine generator, the mechanisms that can excite the
torsional response of the turbine generator, and how the
turbine design can avoid large torsional responses that can
result in fatigue damage to the blades and the shaft and
ultimate failure of the machine.
II. TORSIONAL CHARACTERISTICS
Turbine generators will respond to torsional stimuli by
vibrating in a combination of their torsional modes of
vibration. Therefore, it is important to understand what
torsional modes a turbine generator has and how they can be
influenced by the grid. A typical steam turbine generator is
comprised of a high pressure turbine (HP), one or more
intermediate pressure (IP) or low pressure (LP) turbines, a
generator, and possibly a rotating exciter or a collector.

Typical rotors for each of these components contain a fairly
stiff body of larger diameter that supports the turbine blades or
current windings and smaller diameter shafts that are
supported by the bearings and connect them to other
components. The connecting shafts are usually more flexible
than the major components and the shafts ends are bolted to
other components by bolted couplings. Fig. 1 provides an
example of a typical large nuclear turbine-generator that will
be used here to study typical torsional characteristics of a
large steam turbine-generator. Understanding the modes and
frequencies of the turbine-generator will help in understanding
how to avoid torsional problems.
Fig. 1. Example of a large nuclear turbine-generator rotating section with a
high pressure turbine rotor, 3 low pressure turbine rotors, a 4-pole generator
rotor, and a rotating exciter.
The susceptibility of the turbine-generator to torsional
vibration depends on its torsional frequencies and mode
shapes. As the size of turbine-generators increases, the
natural frequencies will decrease so there will be more
torsional modes with frequencies low enough to be a potential
problem for torsional vibration. The large, nuclear turbine–
generator depicted in Fig. 1 will be used as an example to help
demonstrate the things that may make the turbine-generator
susceptible to torsional vibration problems.
Each turbine-generator that is comprised of separate
components has a series of torsional modes where the major
components rotate as relatively rigid bodies while the
distortion is primarily in the more flexible shafts that connect
them together. There will be one such mode for each major
component that makes up the turbine-generator. Since the
whole turbine generator rotor is not restrained against rotation,
the lowest frequency torsional mode will be the free body
rotation of the complete turbine-generator rotor and the
associated torsional mode will have a constant amplitude over
its complete length and a frequency of Zero Hz. This
torsional mode is usually not included in the torsional modes
that are listed and the first mode considered is often labeled as
the second torsional mode as a result. This is the convention
that is used here.
Examples of the other low frequency modes for the
example turbine-generator shown in Fig. 1 are shown in Fig.
2. The mode figures show the modes overlaid over a picture
of the turbine-generator such that each mode shows the
torsional displacement along the complete turbine-generator
rotor that is displayed at the top. The sub-synchronous modes
shown in Fig. 2 are the modes where the major components
act as rigid cylinders rotating relative to each other by twisting
2
of the flexible shafts that connect them together. These sub-
synchronous modes can interact with any sub-synchronous
natural frequencies of the grid on transmission lines with
series capacitance installed on them. Mode 2 in Fig. 2 is the
fundamental torsional mode of the turbine generator where the
whole turbine-generator rotor twists from end to end. Since
most of the major stiffer regions are represented by horizontal
lines, these parts of the rotor are merely rolling as rigid bodies
while shafts that connect them are being twisted from end-to-
end. Mode 6 has only the exciter rolling back and forth with
the shaft to the generator taking all the strain.
Fig. 2. Example of sub-synchronous modes for the turbine-generator shown
in Figure 1. There are 6 modes for the 6 separate components but the first
mode is not shown.
The next set of torsional modes are those for which the
major components themselves twist in their first twisting
modes with the ends rotating in opposite directions. Usually,
the first twisting modes of the low pressure turbines are the
ones with the lowest frequencies, particularly when the
turbines are designed with impulse blading that require lower
diameter seals for the stationary blade rows. The first LP
twisting modes typically interact with the umbrella modes of
the largest blades in the lowest pressure blade rows since the
blades have natural frequencies that are often close to the
frequency of the underlying torsional modes of the LP rotors.
The combination of the LP rotor twisting mode with the
umbrella modes of the blade row will result in two additional
torsional modes for each LP rotor, 6 additional modes when
all three LP rotors are included. These are in addition to the 3

LP twisting modes which results in 9 modes overall for the
three LP rotors. The interaction of the umbrella modes with
the LP twisting modes results in one mode for each LP rotor
where the blades vibrate with the rotor, one where they vibrate
in the standard umbrella mode with little rotor participation,
and one where the blades vibrate opposite to the rotor. Fig. 3
shows the three torsional modes where the blades vibrate with
the rotor (since there are 3 LP rotors), Fig. 4 shows the blade
umbrella modes that interact primarily with the second LP
torsional modes, and Fig. 5 shows the 3 modes where the
blades vibrate opposite to the rotor. In these figures, the
magnitude of the blade response is depicted by the length of
the lines emanating from the rotor at the position of the blade
row.
Fig. 3. Example of the first LP twisting modes of the turbine generator
coupled with the L-0 umbrella modes where the blades vibrate in the same
direction as the rotor. Both L-0 and L-1 blade rows participate.
Fig. 4. Example of the first L-0 umbrella modes of the turbine generator.
3
Fig. 5. Example of the first LP twisting modes of the turbine generator
coupled with the L-0 umbrella modes where the blades vibrate in the opposite
direction to the rotor..
For this turbine-generator the umbrella modes for the first
L-0 blade frequency do not interact significantly with the
second LP torsional mode because the frequencies of the two
modes are well separated so the frequency of the umbrella
modes remain very close to the natural frequencies of the
blade modes as they would appear on a Campbell diagram.
Fig. 6 is a plot that shows the measured torsional frequency
response from the turbine-generator that was shown in Fig. 1.
This plot was generated from measurements obtained by on-
line monitoring [1] of the turbine rotor at full power operating
conditions. The modes that have been discussed and shown in
Fig. 2, 3, 4, and 5 are easily identified although the response
of the umbrella mode frequencies from Fig. 4 is small and
requires a more detailed analysis to obtain than that shown in
Fig. 6.
The sub-synchronous modes are labeled as Rigid Body
Modes on Fig. 6 and include all 5 of the sub-synchronous
modes. Mode 6, which is primarily the exciter rotating on the
end of the generator, appears just below the first harmonic of
the running speed. The apparent mode at about 1 Hz is not a
torsional mode but is the frequency response of the complete
rotor relative to the restoring force of the air gap torque. The
sharp peaks that are labeled at 1/Rev, 2/Rev, etc. are the
response of the rotor to the forced vibration at the harmonics
of the running speed where the dominant forces exist for all
rotating equipment.
The three modes that were shown in Fig. 3 are labeled as
1st LP Twisting L-0 In Phase on Fig. 6. The small bump at
about 73 Hz is due to the first L-0 umbrella modes that are
shown in Fig. 4. As discussed previously, they do not respond
well on the shaft because the second LP modes are at much
higher frequency and don’t interact well with the blades at this
frequency. The peak at about 80 Hz is actually three peaks

when resolved in more detail and represents the 3 modes on
Fig. 5. They are labeled as 1st LP Twisting L-0 Out of Phase
on Figure 6.
Fig. 6. Measured Torsional Frequency Response of turbine-generator in Fig.1
as obtained by On-Line Monitoring.
There are 6 additional modes associated with the 1st L-1
umbrella modes and 6 more for the 2nd umbrella modes of the
L-0 blade; however, the interaction of these modes with each
other and with the generator makes them more difficult to
identify as individual modes in the response. Most of these
modes can be identified in the cluster of modes near the 4/Rev
harmonic response. Of particular importance are the two
generator modes which are labeled as 1st Generator and 2nd
generator on Fig. 6. The mode shapes for these two modes,
along with the mode shape for the 1st HP mode, are shown on
Fig. 7.
Fig. 7. Example of the first and second generator modes (Modes 21 and 26).
Also shown is the first HP twisting mode (Mode 22).
4
The generator modes are important because they are the
mechanism by which transient air gap torques can excite the
turbine-generator. If the generator participates in a mode
whose frequency is close to twice the grid frequency, negative
sequence current torques will excite it. If the mode also has
the participation some of the turbine blades, the possibility of
a loss of blades from fatigue due to torsional vibration may be
high. Fatigue of turbine blades due to torsional vibration has
resulted in loss of turbine blades, significant unbalance
conditions on the turbine generator, and catastrophic failures
due to the resulting high lateral vibration. Since torsional
vibration can occur without any knowledge by the operators,
such failures often occur suddenly without warning after the
turbine generator has operated successfully for an extended
time period.
As can be seen in Fig. 6, this particular turbine-generator
has many torsional modes with frequencies close to twice the
grid frequency and may be susceptible to torsional vibration
from negative sequence current torques. In fact, a turbine-
generator similar to this one suffered a torsional failure due to
loss of L-1 blades and had to be modified to shift the 2nd
generator mode away from 120 Hz.
III. APPLIED TORQUES FROM THE GRID
The grid can generate both steady-state and transient
oscillating torques on the generator. Steady oscillating
torques are generally due to two causes:
• Sub-synchronous resonance (SSR) that can result when a
turbine-generator is connected to a transmission line that
has series capacitor compensation or is connected to a
direct current grid.
• Negative sequence current (NSC) torques that are caused
by unbalanced load on the generator phases and have a
frequency at twice the grid frequency.
SSR is primarily a problem that is mitigated by changes to
grid parameters and not by the design of the turbine. Since
this discussion is primarily about the turbine-generator, it will
concentrate on the effect of negative sequence current.
Negative sequence current torque is caused by operation
with unbalanced load on the terminals of the generator which
results in an oscillating torque at twice the grid frequency.
Some amount of unbalance is always present during normal
operation and a torque with a magnitude of about one to two
per cent of the full power-torque is typical. Steady negative
sequence current torques can also occur due to a sustained
fault if the circuit breaker that isolates the fault malfunctions
or if the fault occurs inside the circuit breaker protection zone.
Transient torques occur when there is a sudden change
in operation. They can occur as a result of the following:
• Synchronization has to balance the torque from the steam
flow that is applied to the blades against the reacting air
gap torque. When the turbine-generator is synchronized

to the grid, there will always be some mismatch and the
changes that occur to cause the torques to equalize will
generate a transient condition.
• Line switching is similar to synchronization except it can
occur with the plant at power.
• Faults on the grid can cause a significant transient torque
to be applied to the generator. Torques at the grid
frequency and at twice the grid frequency can occur. The
torque at the grid frequency will decay rapidly but the one
at twice the grid frequency can be sustained as long as the
fault persists. Often, after a fault is cleared, the breaker
will attempt to re-close which can result in another
transient.
IV. TURBINE-GENERATOR TORSIONAL RESPONSE
CHARACTERISTICS AND MITIGATION
The torsional response of the turbine generator depends on
the frequency of the torsional modes and the mode shapes.
Specifically, operating the turbine-generator with an excitable
torsional mode that has a frequency that is too close to twice
the grid frequency where it can be excited by a sustained
negative sequence torque is not acceptable for the following
reasons:
• Torsional damping is generally very low, in the order of
0.1 per cent of critical damping or less. Aero-elastic
amplification of torsional modes that include blade
vibration can occur and it can effectively lead to negative
damping and instability of the torsional vibration. Large
steam turbine-generators have long, twisted, low-pressure
blades with natural frequencies that are tuned to avoid
harmonics of the running speed. These blades typically
have natural frequencies at running speed that are near the
grid frequency and twice the grid frequency when
coupled with torsionally flexible LP rotors. The second
mode mode-shape of the blades often includes some
twisting around the radial axis of the blade that can affect
the critical flow area between the blades. When operating
with supersonic relative outlet velocities, the pressure
ratio across a stage where these blades all move in phase,
as is required by torsional vibration where the base of the
blades must move together as the shaft vibrates in torsion,
can be significantly affected by the vibration. If an
increasing mode vibration amplitude results in an
increasing pressure ratio across the stage, aero-elastic
amplification of the torsional vibration is possible.
• Due to the low damping involved, it requires about 300 to
400 vibration cycles to attain the full vibratory response
of a torsional mode when operating at resonance.
However, if the mode frequency and the driving
frequency do not coincide, the vibratory response will
result in “beating” at a beat frequency that is equal to the
difference in the two frequencies. As the forcing function
alternates between driving the response and suppressing
the response, it becomes difficult to reach resonance
5
vibration conditions. A frequency difference of as little
as a few tenths of a hertz is often sufficient to reduce the
response to acceptable levels.
• Although the torsional frequencies are very stable during
operation, they will change by up to one Hz due to
temperature changes associated with changes in operating
conditions. Typically, for a large nuclear turbine
generator with reheat, the frequency of the LP torsional
modes that reside around twice the grid frequency will
decrease by 0.3 to 0.5 Hz as the plant moves from
synchronization to full power.
The best way to ensure that a steam turbine generator will
not be damaged by torsional vibration is to provide sufficient
frequency margin with respect to steady-state oscillating
torques that can originate from the grid. This requires that the
grid be designed to confirm that SSR will not occur for sub-
synchronous modes and that sufficient frequency margin
exists for any torsional mode near twice the grid frequency to
ensure that grid disturbances and grid frequency variations
will not result in excessive torsional response. The standard
recommended frequency margin around twice the grid
frequency is two Hz on either side of the double-grid
frequency. In the U.S. this would require that no torsional
mode that can be excited through the generator should have a
frequency that is between 118 Hz and 122 Hz.
Fig. 8 (from Reference [2]) shows the calculated peak
torsional response to a specific grid fault for an excitable
torsional mode with a frequency near twice the grid
frequency.
Peak Stress in Transient Response During Fault
L-0 Blade on Generator End of LP-B
Peak Transient Stress (KSI)
180
160
140
120
0.1 Second
0.5 Second
100 1 Second
80 2 Seconds
3 Seconds
60
40
20
0
118 119 120 121 122
Frequency of Torsional Mode (Hz)
Fig. 8. Peak Response as a Function of Frequency for a Mode
with a Frequency near 120 Hz and for various Fault Clearing
Times (From Reference [2])
The response is given as a function of the torsional mode
frequency as well as the time that the torque is sustained. The
results show that for faults cleared in the typical clearing time
for a fault which is less than one-tenth of a second, the peak
magnitude of the response is not significantly affected by the
mode frequency. Thus, for such faults the impulse load, for
which the response is relatively independent of mode
frequency, dominates. When the negative sequence torque is
 6

sustained for a longer period of time, the frequency of the

mode has a large impact, but if the standard frequency margin
is maintained, the response is again limited to that caused by
the impulse load. Therefore providing sufficient frequency
margin around twice the grid frequency will be sufficient to
eliminate torsional concern.

V. REFERENCES

Papers from Conference Proceedings (Published):

[1] Giesecke, H. D. "Measuring Torsional Vibration Frequencies by
On=Line Monitoring”, Proceedings of IJPGC03 Atlanta, Georgia USA,
2003

Technical Reports:
[2] “Steam Turbine-Generator Torsional Vibration Interaction with the
Electrical Network”, EPRI Tutorial 1011679, Final Report, Nov. 2005.

VI. BIOGRAPHIES

Hans D. Giesecke was born in Berlin, Germany in

1942. He immigrated to the United States with his
family in 1949 and graduated from Rutgers
University with a degree in Physics in 1964. While
doing graduate studies at the University of
Maryland in Physics and Nuclear Engineering, he
began working at MPR Associates Inc. and is still
working there in partial retirement..
Giesecke’s work at MPR has involved
numerous disciplines including turbine flow field
analysis for transonic blade rows as part of efforts to improve low pressure
blade designs. He has been involved in many facets of turbine design and
analysis since the early 1970s and his work included the development of
software tools for fluid dynamics, structural analysis, stress analysis, thermal
analysis and thermo-hydraulic analysis. Among other things, these tools have
been used to analyze turbines from the fluid flow in the blade path to start-up
transients and vibration problems. Also included were nuclear power plant
safety analysis, power plant transients, the effects of water hammer in piping
systems including two-phase flow and the entrainment of gases, and various
unique problems that he worked on at MPR.
On numerous occasions Giesecke participated with the investigation of
several major turbine failures including several that were catastrophic. In
conjunction with others at MPR and with instrumentation developed by GE-
LES, Giesecke was at the forefront of developing the techniques and
understanding currently used for on-line monitoring of turbine generators to
determine their torsional modes and frequencies. These techniques are now
being used by most OEMs to measure the torsional frequencies of turbine
generators.