Abstract
Over the past decade, monitoring capabilities have been growing and expanding to meet the ever-demanding reliability and performance needs within the power generation industry. Even with these increases, many failure events are not adequately captured with existing monitoring and sensor packages, especially for gas turbine engines. In general, gas turbines utilize pressure, temperature, and vibration sensors with several calculated points due in range from costly sensors to impractical to nearly physically impossible.
This paper will serve as an interim update for this investigation of current monitoring strategies to determine limitations and outline steps to better capture asset health. The gas turbine will be divided into three (3) sections for the purpose of categorizing sensor capabilities: compressor, combustor, turbine/rotor. Each section of the gas turbine will include an outline for current, typical measurements. Information will also be shared on new and/or in-development sensors that could be utilized to enhance gas turbine monitoring. Lastly, key monitoring needs will be identified for focus of on-going work to determine possible solutions for gaps in monitoring capabilities and/or methodologies to better capture gas turbine health status.
Based on this information, monitoring solution roadmaps are presented, which identify key instrumentation and developments required to characterize the issue, and enhanced modeling methods for solutions.
