RAM - Performance of Modern Gas Turbines

Power and heat rate, and exhaust gas and noise emissions are commonly used to evaluate the performance of power generation equipment. Recently, reliability, availability and maintainability (RAM) are being widely adopted as more significant evaluation criteria for gas turbine power plants. All the criteria are used to evaluate new equipment and the measurements on previous installations are the basis for expected values. What differentiates RAM from the other three criteria is the duration of the measurements. Collecting and processing of RAM data is different since it needs to be collected during normal operation of the plant and over a long period of time. This means it is a coordinated effort of both partners; the customers and the manufacturers.This paper provides a summary of results over a period of four years with a review of the data and conclusions concerning the actual operation. It shows that gas turbine plants can be operated with high reliability and availability requirements. Outages can be reduced in both frequency and length, if the service management is based on the shared information of a worldwide RAM field data collection. A coordinated communication line is a prerequisite for sharing this information. The exchange of information is also mandatory if short reaction time for improvements is required. The planning for the implementation of the communication tools is presented in detail in terms of a ‘road map’ of this program.Copyright © 1996 by ASME