Due to high temperature and loadings present in gas turbines, parts experience harsh working conditions and many causes could lead to a state of failure despite all the design precautions and safety margins considered. As “most of science is well-documented failure”, it is quite normal for many OEMs and designers to be willing to start an extensive research and investigation to find the Root Cause of the failures. This is also the same for Users in many cases as they want to know what the real cause of the failure is and what their consequent actions should be so that they can modify some protocols in their system.

Here, in Turbotec, we have been engaged in quite a number of failure investigations and determining the Root Cause of incidents happened through Problem Solving Methods and Root Cause Analysis. Our rigorous steps in the process of failure investigation and service issue resolution are:

1-     Team Formation

2-     Problem Description and Measure

3-     Interim Containment Actions Implementation

4-     Defining Problem Root Causes

5-     Developing Permanent Corrective Actions

6-     Implementing Permanent Corrective Actions

7-     Preventing Reoccurrences

8-     Recognizing and Congratulating the Team

9-     Publishing Final Report along the Lessons Learned

The multidisciplinary nature of our activities in Turbotec lets us study the problem and investigate it from different aspects such as specific operating conditions of the case and its effects on the equipment, heat transfer and temperature distribution, structural calculations, life estimation, vibration and dynamics, fracture surface appearance, etc.