Development of Management Support System for Gas Turbine Hot Gas Path Parts

The combined cycle power plants operating in Japan are normally provided with two or more gas turbines and spare parts in quantities as required by the number of gas turbine units in operation. Since the quantity of hot gas path parts installed in a gas turbine is massive, the parts required for a gas turbine are arranged in groups so as to simplify the control of parts inventory. These parts groups are replaced and repaired at each inspection. Furthermore, since the costs of hot gas path parts are very high, using the parts efficiently and implementing measuring to prolong the life of the parts are very important. Detailed parts rotation schedules are prepared to properly rotate the spare parts groups. In doing so, the length of service life, quantity of spare parts, schedules for using the parts for several years to come, and time required for maintenance and repairs must be taken into consideration. Special characteristics of respective power plants such as plans for prolonging the service life of parts and various costs must be taken into consideration. Since it is difficult to prepare the schedules for rotating parts automatically, skilled workers are carrying out most of work manually at present. Against such a backdrop, the authors have developed the “Management Support System for Gas Turbine Hot Gas Path Parts”. This system can be used to reduce the maintenance and repair costs by optimizing parts rotation schedules. The basic concepts of the development are as follows. 1) Some parts can be shared among plural number of power plants with the gas turbines of the same model. A user freely sets models of the gas turbines, categorization of parts, and numbers of the parts dealt with. 2) The unit of the part management is done based on not groups but serial numbers. Moreover, replacing parts is enabled. 3) The program is modulated according to the functions. Addition, change, and deletion of these functions are facilitated. The total system is developed platform-free.