and estimatethe mean local operating temperature of two ex-service 1st stage blades Claudia Rinaldi*, Erica Vacchieri**, Marco Mandelli*** ‘9th Liege Conference on material for advanced power engineering Liege, Belgio, 27-29 Settembre 2010 * ERSE SpA **ANSALDO ENERGIA GENOVA ***PROING ITALIA In the frame of the collaborative program COST 538 a coating life prediction code was implemented by Proing and ERSE with an inverse problem solution routine able to calculate the local mean operating temperature from the operating conditions and the extension of the coating depleted regions. Moreover base material degradation models were developed by Ansaldo Energia on both equiaxed and single crystal superalloys. This paper describes the application of such methodologies to two ex-service 1st stage gas turbine blades delivered to COST 538 by AEN after operation in two different plants with different operating conditions. The objective of the study was the application and validation of an innovative NDT and the estimate of the mean operating temperature at different positions of the components. The destructive metallographic analysis of the blades let to validate the non destructive frequency scanning eddy current technique (F-SECT). Coating life modelling results are compared with those of the base material degradation models. An interesting correlation was found between the estimated temperatures with the two methods and also with the NDT findings at the most significant component positions.