The contribution of a medium-sized hydro power plant to the power grid can be either at base load or at peak load. When the latter is the most common operation mode, it increases the start and stop frequency, intensifying the hydro turbine components' degradation, such as the guide bearings. This happens due to more frequent operation in transient states, which means being outside the service point of the machines' nominal condition, consisting of speed, flow, and gross head. Such transient state operation increases the runner bearings' mechanical vibration. The readings are acquired during the runner start-ups and filtered by a DC component mean value and a wavelet packet transform. The filtered series are used to estimate the relationship between the maximum orbit curve displacement and the accumulated operating hours. The estimated equation associated with the ISO 7919-5 vibration standards establishes the sojourn times of the degradation states, sufficient to obtain the transition probability distribution. Thereafter, a triangular probability function is used to determine the observation probability distribution in each state. Both matrices are inputs required by a hidden Markov model aiming to simulate the equipment deterioration process, given a sequence of maximum orbit curve displacements.

First and foremost, I want to thank my supervisor Prof. Giovanni Manassero Junior, Ph.D. It has been pleasing to be his M.Sc. student. The R&D group of Corumbá IV HPP have contributed immensely to my personal and professional time at this project. I specially would like to thank Prof. José Roberto Ribas, Ph.D., and the engineers Oswaldo Pons Rodrigues Junior and Whatson Rocha da Macena.