Utilization of Advanced Prognostic Methods for Gas Turbine

The utilization of various predictive maintenance methods in the industry and the establishment of the principles of retrofitting are now less than a decade old. In order to apply predictive maintenance and to correctly identify faults in machines, it is necessary to continuously maintain information related to the status and condition of the machine and thereby, in addition to optimizing the efficiency, necessary measures are taken to prevent the development of defects and serious risks. These measures, in addition to reducing the time and cost of repairs, will prevent serious damage to the equipment and hence prolong its useful life. One of the most important industrial equipment playing a key role is the gas turbine, already used in vast applications and industries such as power plants, aerospace, oil and gas. Since maintenance costs are high, it is imperative that measures be taken to anticipate defects that may occur. Another point to be taken into consideration is that if this equipment fails, the industry will suffer heavy downtime costs. Therefore, it should be a priority to estimate the remaining useful life (RUL) of a gas turbine unit using methods that can be used to reduce the risk of occurring failures. In this paper, a brief description of fault prognostics techniques and experimental studies in this field have been addressed, as well as the practical and potential applications of these methods in the case of gas turbines.