Understanding Gas Turbine Failures

This course has been designed especially for gas turbine owners and operators to help them identify the root cause of failures within gas turbines and the implications of these so that they are able to avoid what could be catastrophic damage to their machine.Gas turbines have a large number of uses, in a variety of applications ranging from power stations to vehicles and they have revolutionised the air travel industry and the way it operates. However, they are not always efficient and are known to suffer from failures which can be attributed to a number of causes within the design, operation, manufacture and even the maintenance of gas turbines.The course will, first of all, examine why component degradation occurs and how the designer can deal with this. The failure analysis process will then be covered before addressing the four main failure areas of design, operation, manufacture and maintenance, looking at possible causes for each part. Since failures are generally expensive and cause significant disruption to power generation, the need for, and role of, proper investigations will be emphasised and the course will close with implications of failures.Throughout the course, numerous examples, from a variety of machine types, will be used to emphasise the key issues and enhance understanding.