Redundancy in the control of a gas turbine for naval applications

Abstract

The gas turbine used in marine propulsion for increased efficiency and safety and with a very good power / weight ratio, have a control system that provides alarm, monitoring and control functions, including over-speed protection. The paper presents the inclusion of redundancy in the control of the gas turbine so that it works under optimum operating conditions under any regime. The authors' contribution consisted in the elaboration of control schemes so as to ensure a redundancy of the gas turbine control in case the main control module fails. The analysis of the gas turbine construction led to the elaboration of the hardware structure of the system, based on the doubling of the fuel and speed controls as well as of the related transducers by the gas turbine manufacturer. This redundancy is ensured by the introduction of an additional control module that ensures minimal functionality until the status of the main module is restored. The operation of the two modules, the basic one and the redundant one, are ensured on the basis of software, designed by the authors of the paper. The implemented program also limits the size of the variation, keeping the turbines in a correct operating mode.