Gas Turbine Reliability: How? How Much? Where?

Methods to establish component reliability have been in existence for nearly forty years. However, these methods have not been applied to gas turbine systems, because of a lack of consistent definitions and methodology. This paper describes a systematic procedure for calculating control-system reliability, which also can be extended to calculations for mechanical equipment. This is accomplished by a computerized model. Using the results of this model, practical methods and configurations are described to improve gas turbine reliability, such as: redundancy of essential components; quality of components; environmental factors; sensing devices and actuators; and circuits and logic design. The paper also compares these methods and the resulting reliability improvements in system cost and complexity.