Application Note

Monitoring Gas Turbines

Aero derivative gas turbines are effectively used within the Oil &
Gas industry as a high power driver for gas compression and
power generation. Focusing on maximum production output at
minimum production cost has made the performance and
maintenance requirements more important than ever before.

The machine monitoring strategy for a gas turbine should take

the potential failure mode of the machine design into account.
The machinery design and the recommendations of the
manufacturer are equally important with respect to location and
type of process and vibration sensors.

Gas turbine manufacturer base the acceptance of It is up to the end user of the turbine to balance the
the machines on common standard and guidelines, investment cost, and the cost of running a
like API, ISO, VDI etc. or in-house developed predictive maintenance system up against:
acceptance criteria. Usually gas turbines are pre-
equipped with sensors based on the vendor • Higher production output
specifications. Using this equipment and prescribed • Less unexpected repairs
monitoring set-up should be regarded as an • Optimized maintenance scheduling
important part of the overall monitoring strategy, • Optimized machine performance
especially when considering the importance of
maintaining guarantee. However by analyzing the Gas Turbine Predictive Monitoring can be divided
potential failure modes of a gas turbine, additional into monitoring of:
requirements to the monitoring strategy and
hence the monitoring system becomes evident. • Process parameters
• Vibration parameters
Potential Failures have different distribution
depending upon the application (mechanical
The process parameters are used for making
design, operation range, environment etc.).
performance and efficiency calculations. The
Investigations show that around 70% of all failures
vibration parameters are necessary when judging
can be assigned to product faults, i.e.
the condition of the rotating parts. By combining
vibration and performance data, better diagnostics
• Material faults (e.g. due to fatigue or off- can be made. A monitoring system shall be able to
design) generate alarms not only on the input parameters,
• Faults in planning but also on the calculated values. By setting alarm
• Manufacturing faults levels on the calculated values, and other para-
• Assembly and repair meters the cost of running the system becomes
considerably lower, since the system tells what is
Most of these faults may be detected before they wrong when it is wrong. Instead of having to use
become critical by a system that combines vibration hours every day to check the measurements on the
and performance monitoring. In order to minimize machine, you can concentrate on the measure-
the machine installation costs, such systems are ments where alarms have been generated. For a
rarely recommended by the machine manufacturer.

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Application Note

gas turbine following performance parameters are In dialog with the customer (end user or contractor)
recommended to be calculated. the overall monitoring strategy is scheduled and
implemented accordingly.
• Turbine isentropic efficiency
• Compressor isentropic efficiency
Compressor and Power Turbine
• Compressor isentropic head Front
• Compressor volume flow Center
Rear

• Data corrections against atmospheric

pressure, ambient temperature, relative HP

humidity speed and differential pressure of LP PT

inlet filter. HP

• Heat rate (the actual heat input)

• Corrected heat rate
• Isentropic head
• Fuel gas consumption Accelerometers Displacement Probes
EW 2650 rev. 01

• Air flow
• Gas turbine inlet temperature
• Firing temperature Vibration sensor instrumentation for a Rolls-Royce
RB211 gas turbine, comprising of a 2 shafts gas
Recommended vibration parameters: generator and a power turbine.

• Overall vibration level (according to API Compressor

standards)
• Rotor synchronous amplitude and phase
measurements (Minimum 1X & 2X)
HP HP
• Casing and blade passing frequencies
LP LP
• Journal Bearings – Gap, Orbit HP HP
• Rolling element Bearings – Bearing
frequencies and high frequency noise

- Vibration parameter measurement tools:

Accelerometer Pressure Accelerometer
• DC Sensors
EW 2649 rev. 01

• Band Pass / Smax measurements

• Dual Time function with limiting filters Vibration sensor instrumentation for a General
• Vector measurements – Selective Electric LM 6000 gas turbine (2 shafts based on
Magnitude and Phase the twin spool principle).
• FFT - Auto spectra with zoom capability
• Selective Envelope Spectra
Gas Generator and Power Turbine
• CPB Spectra

The Monitoring Set-up depends on the installed

monitoring equipment and the monitoring strategy GG PT
relevant for the specific application. As the
manufacturer typically installs sensors in
accordance to monitoring requirement (installation
& design manual), complying with the prescriptive
guarantee obligations, Brüel & Kjær Vibro
Accelerometer Accelerometer
monitoring strategies starts with basic EW 2648 rev. 01
considerations in respect to vendor specifications,
respecting any guarantee requirements.
Vibration sensor instrumentation for a General
Electric LM 2500 gas turbine (2 shafts: gas
generator and power turbine).

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 Application Note

Bleed Air Fuel Exhaust

P2
MCPD P54
DP1 T2 P3 TF PF
ΘCDP T54 P80
Air
T3 VF LHV
Filter T80
Combustor
T1

P1
GT
GT GT
Power
Comp. Turbine
GM Turbine
NGG NPT
FD PREC
ΘVSV System boundary for System boundary for
GT Control heat balance 1 heat balance 2

LM 2500 process measuring positions (these signals are easily imported to COMPASSTM and used for judging
the performance condition of the gas turbine).

The gas turbine control system (normally delivered • Will it last until next scheduled
by the manufacturer) requires a number of process overhaul/service?
sensors. Figure 5 shows the sensor installation for a
typical gas turbine (LM 2500). The Brüel & Kjær The conditioning monitoring system COMPASSTM is
Vibro conditioning monitoring system imports these a fully automatic integrated monitoring system.
values from the DCS system, as scalar values Through its modular concept, COMPASS™ can be
(normally no additional process sensors needs to be adapted to a large range of different machines so
installed). that all of the requirements of a modern condition
based maintenance strategy are fulfilled by one,
The Brüel & Kjær Vibro conditioning monitoring plant-wide system
system requirements are considered as equal parts
of warning of imminent failure and adequate COMPASSTM is a rack based (19 inches) modular
protection (safety) of personnel and facilities from safety and conditioning monitoring system, which can
undesirable accidents. Furthermore, the goal is to be tailored to meet any gas turbine application.
provide the right information to the operations and
maintenance personnel, where the information is The gas turbine signals are conditioned, filtered and
accurate and timely information that can be used to (if necessary) rectified, by the processor modules.
make intelligent machinery management decisions, Narrow-band filtering (order tracking) with regard to
i.e.: turbine shaft speed(s), band pass measurements
and any special analysis requirements, like Smax,
• Continue or not? orbit measurements, CPB, time function
• If it fails, what are the consequences? measurements is done by the processor modules.
• Can the machine be re-started?
• What should be inspected? The processed signals is stored in the COMPASSTM
• Is the machine operating efficiently? database and displayed on the central computer,

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Application Note

X-terminal or remotely accessed through the modem The thrust position is extremely critical since thrust
connection or Internet. bearing failures and axial rubs can be catastrophic
for gas turbines. The thrust position is best measured
The sensor selection is based on measuring with the displacement sensor(s) monitoring the thrust
vibration, process and other relevant parameters. If collar movement.
any additional sensors are required you should
consult your Brüel & Kjær Vibro representative. The Bearings design of industrial gas turbines is
quite different from aero-derivative applications.
Gas turbines require vibration sensors measuring Industrial applications usually use fluid film bearings,
vibration severity, the direction vibration (reference while the aero-derivatives use rolling bearing
sensor) and the motion of the shafts (position relative elements. However, the bearing type depends on
to bearings and seals) giving: manufacturer traditions and if the industrial gas
turbine design originates from aero-derivative
• Amplitude applications.
• Phase
• Frequency Therefore, depending on the type of bearing {rolling
element, fluid film and/or squeeze film bearings}
When monitoring shaft vibration on gas turbines different measurement and diagnosis techniques
displacement sensors are recommended. The should be applied.
vibration phase is measured by a reference sensor;
either an infrared or displacement sensor. • Fluid film bearings (including squeeze film) are
monitored from 0 to 10 times the rotational
Bearing cap or case mounted seismic sensors (e.g. speed, with focus on the first few harmonics of
accelerometers) are useful for evaluating casing the rotational speed and the shaft lateral
vibrations and to provide absolute vibrations resonant (natural) frequencies.
measurements. The sensor should be selected • Rolling element bearings are not only
based on its response curve, frequency range, monitored with regard to outer, inner and ball
sensitivity and noise susceptibility. EEx approval for pass fault frequencies, but special techniques
gas turbine sensors is normally required like CPB, Envelope and Cepstrum analysis are
successfully applied in order to predict
The seismic sensor is often the preferred choice approaching bearing faults.
when obliging harsh environment, i.e. areas around
the gas producer and power turbine, where the It is not unusable to meet gas turbine designs
temperature is far too high for traditional containing both fluid film and rolling element
displacement and velocity sensors. Therefore, when bearings, dependent on the design of the shaft
using seismic sensors, to measure shaft vibration, on support and its arrangement.
a gas turbine, considerations of where to mount the
sensors are decisive for the result. The sensor Summary
should be mounted at a location where the vibration Brüel & Kjær Vibro Conditioning monitoring system
is transmitted directly to the sensor, without much COMPASSTM used together with a well-considered
loss. The very strong omni-directional vibrations monitoring strategy for the individual gas turbine
found in some gas turbines may overload the sensor. application yields the optimum proactive protection of
Transducers with built in filters or mechanical filtering gas turbines.
at the transducer location are required for some
transducer locations. The benefits of optimizing monitoring strategies to
consider the criticality of the specific design and
potential failure modes clearly distinguish in
improved performance and reliability turning directly
into revenue improvements or cost reductions.

Brüel & Kjær Vibro A/S Brüel & Kjær Vibro GmbH
2850 Nærum – Denmark 65293 Darmstadt – Germany
Tel.: +45 4580 0500 Tel.: +49 (0) 6151 428 1100
Fax: +45 4580 2937 Fax: +49 (0) 6151 428 1200
E-mail: [email protected] E-mail: [email protected]
Internet: www.bkvibro.com Internet: www.bkvibro.com
BAN0010-EN-12