Effective maintenance, repair and design improvements of gas turbines require the classification of turbine automatic shutdown events into actionable categories. In particular, analysis is required at two distinct points in the life cycle of a shutdown event. The first evaluation is at the time of the shutdown when an initial assessment of the cause and the appropriate action must be decided as quickly as possible to return the turbine to service. At the time of the event, the primary sources of data are information collected from the sensors and control system. A second assessment is often performed as a post-event evaluation using additional information to validate the cause. General Electric created Case-Based Reasoning (CBR) tools to perform these classifications automatically. The first CBR tool, which works at the time of the event, was deployed in 2004. The second CBR tool was placed in operation in 2006.
