Self-Tuning Routine Alarm Analysis of Vibration Signals in Steam Turbine Generators

Abstract

This paper presents a self-tuning framework for the diagnosis of routine alarms in steam turbine generators utilizing a combination of inductive machine learning and knowledge-based heuristics. The techniques provide a novel basis for initializing and updating time series feature extraction parameters used in the automated decision support of vibration events due to operational transients. The data-driven nature of the algorithms allows for machine-specific characteristics of individual turbines to be learned and reasoned about. The paper provides a case study illustrating the routine alarm paradigm, and the applicability of systems using self-tuning techniques. The approaches discussed throughout are presented to provide useful diagnosis tools for the reliability and maintenance analysis of steam turbine generators.