Eng. Opt., 1994, Vol. 22, pp. 185-201 © 1994 Gordon and Breach Science Publishers S.A. Reprints available directly from the publisher Printed in Malaysia Photocopying permitted by license only COMPROMISE: AN EFFECTIVE APPROACH FOR CONDITION-BASED MAINTENANCE MANAGEMENT OF GAS TURBINES WEI CHEN', CYRUS B. MEHER-HOMJI and FARROKH MISTREE' ‘Systems Realization Laboratory, The George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Georgia 30332-0405, USA. *Boyce Engineering International, Inc., Houston, Texas 77099, USA. (Received October 14, 1992; in final form September 28, 1993) ‘A decision-based approach to condition-based maintenance management of rotating machinery is intro- duced and illustrated by formulating and solving a multiple objective maintenance management problem for a 15 MW industrial gas turbine. The compromise Decision Support Problem approach is used because provides a convenient way of incorporating both information from condition monitoring and con- siderations of factors such as machine degradation, operating cost (fuel cost), production loss, mi tenance cost, environmental protection, machine availability, etc. The focus in this paper is on explaining, the approach rather than on the results per se. KEY WORDS: Condition monitoring, multiple objective maintenance management, gas turbine, com- promise Decision Support Problem. NOTATION BTP _ bearing temperature EC Cyr hourly overall cost for one overhaul cycle $/hr G cumulative cost of fuel $ CG hourly interest charge S/he Cy total interest charge 3 cs initial fuel cost S/he Cy total cost during one overhaul cycle s CEF compressor efficiency % 4, deviation variables for the system goals - D deterioration rate : %/4,000hrs E electricity profit S/he EGT exhaust gas temperature oF EL electricity profit loss during shutdown s i annual interest rate %o/year 185186 W. CHEN ET AL. OMC__ overhaul maintenance cost $ PMC preventive maintenance cost $ Ty time between overhauls 1,000hrs T, overhaul shutdown duration 1,000hrs 7 time to pay off the maintenance cost by savings in fuel cost hrs VIB vibration level in/sec VIS lubrication oil viscosity ssu 1 FRAME OF REFERENCE The problem of maintenance management. In recent years aero gas turbine tech- nology has been introduced in the design of heavy-duty industrial turbines. As a result industrial gas turbines have become more sophisticated and demand rigor- ously controlled maintenance’. The problem of maintenance management is also complicated because: © High fuel prices mandate that turbines operate at minimum degradation. © Maintenance involves interdisciplinary work teams that must take into con- sideration factors such as machine degradation, operating cost (fuel cost), produc- tion loss, maintenance cost, environmental protection, machine availability, etc. Amongst these factors, there are at least three major tradeoffs: © The tradeoff between maintenance cost and machine performance. © The tradeoff between the costs associated with preventive maintenance and fuel costs associated with operating the turbine when it is a less than efficient (degraded). © The tradeoff between overhaul costs and increased turbine availability as well as reduced production loss. Usually a fast overhaul, and hence a longer time for the turbine operation and less production profit loss, is accompanied by an increase in the cost of the overhaul. © Mathematical modelling of maintenance management is essential to gain an understanding of the maintenance process. Ideally, maintenance considerations will be introduced during turbine design, as has been proposed in Concurrent Engineering™’. Condition monitoring has been proven to be essential for cost-efficient maintenance management in industrial, marine and aircraft applications**. Using this technique can safely extend the interval between overhauls, minimize the number of open- inspect-and-repair cycles, and improve maintenance efficiency by directing repair and overhaul actions toward specific deficiencies, etc. However, maintenance schedules based on condition monitoring alone cannot take into account the other important factors mentioned earlier or the tradeoffs between them. Because of the complexity involved, maintenance planning is currently based on personal expe- rience and heuristic rules with the aid of condition monitoring. In order to meetGAS TURBINE MAINTENANCE 187 the maintenance challenge an advanced maintenance strategy is required to achieve multi-level requirements. Approach: A decision-based perspective for the solution of maintenance manage- ment problems is proposed in this work. Decision Support Problems (DSPs) are being developed and implemented to provide a means for modeling decisions encountered in design in a computer-assisted environment®, DSPs are categorized as selection, compromise, hierarchical and conditional DSPs". The integration of condition monitoring and the compromise DSP for maintenance management pro- posed by Meher-Homji, ef al."'. The efficacy of using Decision Support Problems in maintenance management is reported in Chen". In this paper a method for using a compromise DSP to solve a condition-based maintenance management problem is demonstrated. Here the method is emphasized rather than specific results. Compromise DSPs refer to a class of constrained, multi-objective optimiza- tion problems which have a wide variety of engineering applications'*. The com- promise DSP formulated in this paper addresses the decisions of when a gas turbine should be overhauled, how long the overhaul should last and how much preventive maintenance should be done during these overhauls. The model is based on a condition-based preventive maintenance policy which covers the following: * Periodic maintenance is performed during overhauls to keep components in satisfactory operating condition. This is achieved by means of systematic inspection, detection and prevention of incipient failure. © Condition monitoring is performed to discover the actual state of the system and decide the preventive and overhaul maintenance actions. ‘* The decision to overhaul the turbine is based on both information obtained by on-line monitoring and on an @ priori model of the deterioration process. The importance of the integration of compromise DSP with condition monitoring lies in the fact that the DSP must be based on the actual running condition of a specific gas turbine as well as on overall considerations such as costs. It is accom- plished as follows: « First, the performance degradation of the particular gas turbine is monitored by collecting information about such factors as gas path analysis (¢.g., gas pressure and temperature), mechanical performance (e.g., vibration level) and the accessories (¢.g., lubrication analysis, ultrasonic monitoring and visual inspection). * Second, the data collected is validated, corrected and compressed to provide reliable and simplified information for subsequent analysis. * Third, for data analysis, dominant health parameters are identified for the representation of turbine health and performance constraints/goals. The relation- ships between these parameters and the system variables are determined using empirical or theoretical relationships, statistical analysis or other mathematical approaches. Also the constraint limits (or goal target values) are specified for degradation limit checks.