Degradation in Turbo Machinery

Gas turbines and steam turbines start to degrade in performance when they first start running. This paper lists the causes of degradation, describes how to monitor degradation, and suggests techniques for minimizing degradation. This paper also suggests how degradation can be handled in contract language for acceptance testing. Lastly, this paper explores a special case, often misunderstood, namely how boiler operation needs to be accounted for when evaluating the effect of degradation (the loss factor) of an HP turbine in a reheat cycle.