Early Fault Detection of Hot Components in Gas Turbines

The working environment of hot components is the most adverse of all gas turbine components. Malfunction of hot components is often followed by catastrophic consequences. Early fault detection plays a significant role in detecting performance deterioration immediately and reducing unscheduled maintenance. In this paper, an early fault detection method is introduced to detect early fault symptoms of hot components in gas turbines. The exhaust gas temperature (EGT) is usually used to monitor the performance of the hot components. The EGT is measured by several thermocouples distributed equally at the outlet of the gas turbine. EGT profile is symmetrical when the unit is in normal operation. And the faults of hot components lead to large temperature differences between different thermocouple readings. However, interferences can potentially affect temperature differences, and sometimes, especially in the early stages of the fault, its influence can be even higher than that of the faults. To improve the detection sensitivity, the influence of interferences must be eliminated. The two main interferences investigated in this study are associated with the operating and ambient conditions, and the structure deviation of different combustion chambers caused by processing and installation errors. Based on the basic principles of gas turbines and Fisher discriminant analysis (FDA), a new detection indicator is presented that characterizes the intrinsic structure information of the hot components. Using this new indicator, the interferences involving the certainty and the uncertainty are suppressed and the sensitivity of early fault detection in gas turbine hot components is improved. The robustness and the sensitivity of the proposed method are verified by actual data from a Taurus 70 gas turbine produced by Solar Turbines.